Subscribe to my podcast at:
Meet “Vince Del Monte,” the only Fitness Guru who has been coined The Skinny Guy Savior. He earned this name by dedicating his life to transforming the lives of the skinny, scrawny wimpy guys & skinny girls – helping them become healthier, fitter and more confident in their bodies
Vince has transformed thousands of lives of the skinny, scrawny wimpy individual with a perfect mix of encouragement, humor, no BS, inspiration and fun with his popular best selling “No-Nonsense Muscle Building” system.
Vince has the most popular and publicized “skinny to muscular” transformation stories in the world. He was the poster boy of the “I can’t gain weight or get the girl” story.
So I had the honor interviewing vince at the mind body podcast and here are some of the main topics Vince and I discussed:
Lidor: For those people that don’t really know you, please tell us a little about your background and how your fitness journey began.
Vince: Most people know me as “skinny Vinny” who has dedicated his life helping skinny guys build more muscle in more efficient way possible, with no drugs. I struggled to build muscle through university, and I used to be a long runner. I was the kind of the boys who did not have the girls and was very skinny and that’s my story basically.
I then started my business around 2006, and I can tell you this: There is a lot of skinny guys out there!
In todays world you don’t know who to believe, there are so many guys out there, but I can tell for myself that I’ve been doing this for over than 10 years so people who knows me and follows me know that I’m always involved and many guys just don’t. I’m very passionate about mechanics and helping guys optimize their training in the gym. Most guys are focused on the gas pedal and they forget that if you are gonna push it too much you can get hurt, and even crash and burn!
I’m not teaching people just what do, I make sure to show them how to do it and it all based by world’s physicists., mechanics and people are looking for the true.
Lidor: there is a lot of controversy on “time under tension” and using TEMPO to build more muscle, so I really wanted to know your opinion about this.
Vince: A lot of people have the inability to control their muscle and they need a tool like the tempo to ensure they are controlling and isolating the things you are trying to challenge.
We all know that ” it’s not what you do, is how you do it”. The brain primary function is to protect and make us safe, so we have to have tools that allows us to challenge muscle tissues. Most people don’t see the big picture, what can happen to their joints in 5,10,15 years. So everything we do in the gym today can have a big impact in 3-5 years from now and people who are not training with tempo can make much more harm to their joints and not even being able to bench press 135 pounds.
The currency of muscle growth is control, if you can’t control the weight, you can’t challenge the muscle and if you can’t challenge the muscle then you can’t grow the muscle. So you have to stimulate muscle tissues, you gotta create damage within the muscle and all of that require control.
Lidor: does tempo workout is better for beginners to make your body understand how to work with weights better?
Vince: Absolutely, you want your muscle to work your weights. If you are training for strength let the weights work your muscle. You always need to ensure what your primary goal. Is it strength? Is it building muscle? You can only have 1 priority not many. So if the priority is gaining muscle, you want to make sure that you control the movement.
So yes, for beginners, using tempo is a great tool to use, but you never wanna be ” a slave for the tool”. Tools are simply tools, and once we are getting a better mind muscle connection, you won’t need to use a tempo. So always use tempo as a tool and not the entire tool box.
Lidor: does mind muscle connection is something we should always focus on? Even when we lift for strength? Below 6 reps?
Vince: No, there are phases that you don’t need to use mind muscle connection and the goal is simply to move a weight from point A to B because we want to create peak tension.
Lidor: There are many techniques, I wanted to know your opinion on some of them, such as NOS and NOS- X by Ben pakulski. Are those kind of techniques have any benefit to build more muscle?
Vince: Yes, those are great ways to stimulate muscle growth by cell swelling. The big thing with those techniques is that they are like slash hammers. So we want to make sure that everything we do in the gym we are recovering from it.
Training+ recovery= training effect
And I learned this from an Australian coach back in the early 2000’s and most guys works hard but they don’t recover good enough so their body can’t get better and they even get weaker and smaller over time. I always say: ” you are what you can recover from”.
Lidor: How do you know how much you need to recover?
Vince: There are different systems in the body that require recovery. You have the metabolic system, your muscular system, but you also have a central nervous system , hormonal system and immune system, and this systems takes different period of time to recover. So even if you are metabolically recovered, hormonally you are not recovered. And this systems takes time to recover, so I would say every 6-10 weeks you can take 1 week off specially if you are natural. There is nothing in the world that can replace time, so everybody need some time to recover.
Lidor: For those skinny guys, who have a lot of hard time building muscle, what do you think is the biggest problem that preventing them to build more muscle and body weight?
Vince: I would probably say recovery. I would say they need to take a day off every 2-3 days so for example:
Advanced guys would go with 1 day off/ 2days on/ 1 day off- repeat
Intermediate guys would go with 1-2 days off/ 1-2 days on or 2 days o/ 1 day off/ 1 day on/ 1 day off.
Lidor: In a world that constantly changing, what advice would you give to all of those young guys out there who are trying to get more attraction but still don’t have much to advertise themselves of social media?
Vince: being very clear on what you stand for. The guys who usually has the most follows are usually the guys you either love them or hate them.
So you need to be courage’s enough and say what you mean. Too many fitness guys are just afraid to say what they mean or they just not clear on what they stand for.
I talked about building muscle with baby weights! And I got laugh by that, but then I got mails by people telling me stuff like: ” I wished I saw your videos 20 years ago, I’m 45 now and I can’t bench press more than 135 pounds because I blew up my shoulders trying to train like a bodybuilder.
So for those guys I would say- you got to be here for the long term and that’s the only way. This is a marathon and not a sprint and you also want to do something that you are passionate about, this way when things will not go your way ( which they will) you will still push through and not give up.
So you have to know what is your true calling, your true passion, because if not, you are not gonna be around more than 3-5 years. You also want to make sure you go into events, networking, creating value to others and building relationships.
Lidor: How can you still maintain everything and not letting distructions get into your way and still be committed?
Vince: Just the fact that you are being aware of that resistance and be ok with that.
For me I would start with “fast tasks” which is just some stuff I need to get done with and I give it an hour.
Then I have another block in my day call “MIT”, which stands for ” most important tasks” like working on new projects, collaborating with others and I give it about 3-4 hours from my day. Then I go into ” work mode”, which takes me another hour. That’s really my structure through Monday -Friday.
Lidor: What is your top 3 supplements if you have any?
Vince: Creatine, Beta-alanine and caffeine because they have all the scientific support that I’m not gonna waste my money. So we can start with those 3 and go on from there.
Lidor: Last question I always love to ask the people I interview is what legacy would you like to leave long after you will no longer be among us?
Vince: I think the most important thing for me would be that I was a present father and being fully engaged. And for social media it would be that he was the real deal. He made a lot of impact, he was true and real, although he has been attacked many times by many fitness experts but he still was able to rise up and never gave up.
You can also find Vince Del Monte at:
http://www.vincedelmontefitness.com/blog/
And on social media:
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/vincedelmonte
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vincedelmontelivelargetv
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vincedelmonte/
twitter: https://twitter.com/vincedelmonte
PLEASE SHARE MY PODCAST
Please share my Podcast with your family and friends. Share, Like and Comment on our posts on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter. I would love to hear from you and will answer personally so get in touch with me at:
themindbodypodcast@gmail.com
Did you like the show? If you did, I would truly appreciate it
if you can take 60 seconds to subscribe and give me a 5 star review on iTunes.