Lou Ferrigno’s 10 Steps to a Killer Workout

Step 1: Choose the Exercise

When he was building a Hulk-worthy physique in the ’70s, Ferrigno didn’t have a plethora of machine-exercise options. In addition to free weights, he was limited to basic cable and lever lifts. To fill out his big frame, he focused on gaining strength in the barbell and dumbbell basics. Just look at his shoulder workouts. “When I first started training, I hated doing overhead presses,” he said. “My arms were so long that I was especially weak in that movement. But overhead pressing is so vital to good shoulder development that I just had to force myself to do it in every shoulder routine. I began to progress best when I emphasized dumbbell shoulder presses.”

His chest workouts were similar. Like Ronnie Coleman 30 years later, when Ferrigno was training for the 1974 and 1975 Mr. Olympias, he did bench presses, incline presses, and decline presses in every chest workout. More likely than not, whatever exercise Ferrigno chose it was done with a barbell or dumbbells. “The free-weight compound exercises let you lift the most weight, and they hit multiple muscles at once and force you to balance the weight. All of that helps to build more muscle than an isolation exercise or a machine exercise.” There’s room for all styles of exercises in a routine, but for hulking mass the best choice is usually compound and free weight.

Step 2: Visualize Success

“Without the mind, training and diet both approach zero percent effectiveness,” Ferrigno averred when he was at his ’70s peak. “I spend a good 60 to 90 minutes psyching myself up before a workout. You don’t have to think about only training during that time, but you need to eliminate negativity and focus only on the positive. I think about what body part I have to train, what exercises I plan to do, the weights I’m going to use, how I’m going to feel, and what my muscles are going to look like. Once you’ve visualized all that, it’s much easier to make it a reality. Then I go to the gym and put 100 percent into my workout. All the while until my first set and throughout the workout, I’m reaffirming that I’m going to achieve my goals and create the workout I visualized.”

Step 3: Set a Target

The man immortalized in green body paint and frayed capri pants knew how many reps he wanted to get in before each set. That tally could vary from as few as six to as many as 20. He pyramided the sets of his most basic exercises, typically progressing from 12 reps to 10 to eight to an apex set of six over four sets with progressively heavier resistance. He might finish with a fifth set of 10 reps with a lighter weight. With other exercises, he typically did straight sets of 12 reps.

“I believe in moderately heavy weights, very strict form, and moderate reps,” Ferrigno said. “Some people say you shouldn’t limit yourself by making a rep target before the set begins, but you should know about how many reps you’re going to get for any exercise you do regularly. Focus on that number, and if you can get an extra rep, that’s great. Those people who are always trying to use more weight or do more reps tend to use sloppy form. I want to keep my form strict to avoid injuries.”

Step 4: Get Help

From his initial workouts in New York City in the late ’60s to his early ’90s Olympia comeback sessions in Southern California, Ferrigno almost always trained with a partner. That person would not only spot him and encourage him but also offer helping hands when a set faltered, so he could eke out more reps (see Step 9). To illustrate the encouragement part, let’s journey back to the summer of 1975 when 23-year-old Ferrigno was toiling in R&J Health Studio in Brooklyn in preparation for the Mr. Olympia and a rematch with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Pumping Iron cameras captured Ferrigno psyching up before a set of 245-pound standing shoulder presses, but he wasn’t alone. “How many, Hank?” Ferrigno asks as he grips the bar. “Come on! I want to see 10!” Ferrigno’s partner, Hank Chavis, bellows back, punctuating the sentence with a finger in the behemoth’s face. “You’re going to do it, too! Come on, Lou, you’re going to wipe him out!” Then, with every rep, Chavis shouts encouragement.

Step 5: Cut (Some) Corners

With the exercise selected, success visualized, a rep target, and a partner goading him to reach that target, it’s time to go to work. The set begins. Ferrigno focused on strict form, but that didn’t necessarily mean a full range of motion. In part because of his long limbs, the ROM that worked best for him was sometimes shorter than full. If you look again at that Pumping Iron scene, you’ll notice he doesn’t lock out any of his overhead presses. The final push involves more triceps than delts and is the most difficult segment of the lift, so he’s able to use more weight and put more stress on his shoulders by not locking out. This may not have been significant to 5’5″ Franco Columbu because the entire movement was relatively short for him. But to 6’5″ Ferrigno it mattered. 

“My goal is to always keep the tension on the targeted muscles,” Ferrigno stated. “That can be difficult in a compound exercise because more than one muscle is working. So there are times when I’ll avoid locking out or going too deep in order to make sure I put the maximum stress where I want it to be. I also want to avoid resting points. There’s no point during a set when I want to rest. I want to keep working and keep the tension on my muscles from the start to the finish.”

Step 6: Maintain the Tempo

Go too fast and you’re liable to get sloppy. Go too slow and you limit the number of reps you can tally. Big Lou always strived for that just-right middle ground. “I want to keep the weight under control and steadily moving,” he explained. “Some guys focus on lowering the weight slowly and then firing it up fast, but I lower and raise the weight at the same speed. The important thing is to maintain a tempo that lets you focus on your muscles. If you’re too focused on switching up the speed of the weight when going up or down, you’re already missing the point.”

Step 7: Focus the Stress

This two-time Mr. Universe pre-exhausted and supersetted to focus the stress of exercises. For example, he did dumbbell side laterals before shoulder presses to pre-exhaust his medial delts before the latter compound exercise. He also combined isolation and compound exercises. Uniquely, he finished his chest routine (after the barbell presses in Step 1) with three supersets of cable crossovers and dumbbell pullovers (15 reps each). Doing this better targeted the pullovers, which primarily work the lats and serratus, on his pecs.

Whether he used pre-exhaust, supersets, pyramids, or straight sets, his focus was always on his muscles—and often on specific areas of those muscles. This takes us back to the “homework” he did in Step 2. During that time, he inventoried the areas he wanted to emphasize in the workout, such as his upper, inner pecs or his outer-quad sweeps. Then, during an appropriate set, he stressed that area, keeping it tensed. “You can never let your mind wander during a set. You have to actually feel your targeted muscles working.”

Step 8: Reach the End

In the late ’70s, Mike Mentzer’s low-volume, high-intensity Heavy Duty system rose in prominence in sharp contrast with the volume training of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Mentzer and Schwarzenegger nearly traded blows before trading poses at the 1980 Mr. Olympia. Meanwhile, Ferrigno was busy going green on TV screens. Still, there was no doubt on which side of the debate Ferrigno stood—Team Arnold all the way. Ferrigno did relatively high volume (26 sets for back, for example) with moderate intensity. “You can’t let yourself get too fatigued from a single set,” he said. “If you do, your strength level will be too low for you to do justice to the rest of your workout.” He didn’t aim for absolute failure on working sets, though sometimes he did fail to complete his final rep. Usually, he hit his rep target at somewhere near failure, and then stopped.

Step 9: Keep Going

There were exceptions. Sometimes, he kept going. Almost always this was on the final set or two of an exercise in which his partner could apply his hands and remove some stress (such as pulldowns, barbell curls, or incline presses), and even then forced reps were not some all-out struggle to eke out just one more. “I do forced reps for all my body parts, but I think a lot of guys use forced reps incorrectly,” he said during his Hulk era. “They do one very hard forced rep and quit. I’d prefer to do my full set, have my partner support 20–25 percent of the weight and then do two to three forced reps with him pulling up the weight enough to help me.” Of course, this required an experienced and strong partner familiar with Ferrigno’s strength and range of motion. During his ’90s comeback, Ferrigno trained with fellow pro Frank Hillebrand.

Step 10: Rest and Repeat

When the set was done and the weight was racked, Ferrigno would offer encouragement to his partner and spot him. He worked fast, resting only about 90 seconds between sets of 10 or more reps. Only before his heavier sets of six to nine reps would he pause for more than two minutes. “Getting and maintaining a pump is important, so I want to keep moving and stay in rhythm,” he said. “I don’t want to stop and talk and get out of that rhythm. After I got famous as the Hulk, that was harder to do because lots of people wanted to talk, but I had to explain working out is an important part of my job. You don’t want to waste a workout by losing your pump and getting out of the rhythm you were in.” When one set ended, he was already thinking about the next one, plotting to hit his target reps and visualizing improvements. The biggest bodybuilder in the world was zeroed in on how to grow still bigger. Go Hulk or go home.