Peary Rader’s one day muscle blast programme is a variation on a type of ‘all day workout’ that claims to be able to give you up to an additional half an inch on your biceps in just one session. While this may sound far fetched and incredible, many people have reported satisfactory results and the science behind it is sound. Some have even estimated the gains at an even higher two thirds of an inch. Here we go…

Originally explained in ‘The Rader Master Bodybuilding and Weight Gaining System’, said Peary of his method ‘Most men use it on their arms since no one ever seems to have as large arms as he would like. However it will work on any muscle. We hope that some day when we have a greater understanding of muscle growth and the controlling factors, a similar method can be applied to men and women in a specialized session of perhaps a month and give them a physique that today takes years to acquire’. Sounds good. However, before you begin bare in mind that this is an advanced training method and should not be attempted for those who are not used to training in the gym. Don’t think this is a quick-fix; if you try it with no or little previous experience you will tear your bicep and be put out of action for at least a month.

The one day muscle blast programme requires a day when you have no commitments so that you can spend it simply training, eating and resting. You then use only two exercises – one for biceps and one for triceps – and do a set of each every hour without fail for twelve hours. That’s twenty four sets of exercise stretched out across an entire day, while in between you make sure you eat protein immediately after and spend a lot of time massaging the muscles. I find that a good distraction while doing this is a movie marathon, perhaps watching all of Arnie’s films back to back or all of Stallone’s. Make sure when you do it though to use slightly lighter weights than you would normally.

While this method was originally devised with the arms in mind, the same principals can theoretically be applied to any muscle group or exercise and it’s particularly popular when used with compound movements such as the squat, bench press or deadlift. Theoretically if you used only isolated movements on the other hand you could do a week where you focussed on one muscle group – in theory resulting in a significant swelling of every single muscle group in just one week and up to three or four inches of fresh muscle distributed evenly across your frame. A bodybuilder’s wet dream?

Some trailblazers have also predictably suggested using just this method, or at least using it regularly and intermittently. This in my opinion would be highly likely to result in overtraining however.