THE OG: The Honest Workout

The so-called "Honest Workout" is the set and rep scheme Gironda just kept coming back to, and maybe you will as well

Welcome back, my friends, to the OG, my series on all things Vince Gironda. I sat down over Christmas and really had a good think about everything I could say with regard to the great Iron Guru. Turns out, there’s a lot.

We’ve already had Vince’s biography and two instalments laying out the principles behind his approach to bodybuilding, in both practical and more theoretical terms. Now it’s time to look at Vince’s workouts, and what better place to start than with the workout routine Vince returned to time and again: the 8x8, otherwise known as the “Honest Workout”.

We’ll consider every aspect of the workout, from its essential principles to its history and development, including the special variation used by bodybuilding champion Mohammed Makkawy. As in the other parts, quotations will be taken from Vince’s book The Wild Physique, with page numbers in brackets.

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I have a definite preference for the 8 x 8 system of sets and reps, which I will explain in more detail later. Of course, this is not for beginners. You must work up to the stage where you can benefit from this extremely advanced form of training. I doubt if anyone with less than two years of training experience could benefit from this method. I call it the "honest workout" because of the pure muscle fibre that can be attained with this combination. Keep to 8 X 8 and your muscle fibre will plump out, giving you a solid mass of muscle density as a result. There will only be a minimum of capillary size built with this combination. (WP, pp.22-3)

Here, in a nutshell, are Vince’s thoughts about the 8x8 system. That’s eight sets of eight reps, performed to build serious muscle. Vince considered this to be an advanced form of training, in the sense that you’re better off waiting until you’ve got some experience under your belt — Vince suggested two years — before you try it. But then, when you do, if you do the routine properly and stick with it, increasing the intensity, you will add serious mass to your physique.

The 8x8 works, like a lot of Vince’s routines, on the principle of cumulative fatigue. Although progressive overload is at work, and you’ll be adding more weight to the bar as time passes, you’re not throwing around massive poundages. Instead, you’re trying to perform the 8x8 as quickly as possible. Not that you’ll be rushing things: the aim is simply to reduce rest between sets to the absolute minimum — even to the point where you might put the bar down and then pick it straight back up — so that you’re making the muscles do more work in less and less time.

At my heaviest, when I was about 225lbs, I was benching around 350lbs and floor-pressing close to 400lbs, but honestly I’ve never felt the kind of chest activation I get when I do the guillotine press (a Gironda trademark chest exercise, more on that later) with 135lbs for a set of 8x8, with 15 seconds between sets or less. The feeling of cumulative fatigue, Gironda-style, with your cardiovascular system working double-time to continue supplying blood and nutrients to your muscles, is really something else.