Using Doggcrapp, David Henry packed on 30 lean pounds in fewer than three years.
Doggcrapp is like “Gangnam Style,” an Internet sensation that everyone has heard of but few understand. When Dante Trudel posted his philosophy to an Internet discussion board in 2000, he never thought more than a few dozen meatheads would read it. That explains the moniker. It was his spur-of-the-moment screen name for what he anticipated would be a single post. But Trudel was deluged with questions, the original post grew to 118 pages, and his writings were copied and pasted around the Web. Doggcrapp became the most revolutionary bodybuilding system since HIT arrived more than 40 years ago. In retrospect, the name seems oddly appropriate in a punk rock sort of way because Doggcrapp is an anarchic ideology that challenges the status quo.
Doggcrapp creator Dante Trudel pushes Dusty Hanshaw through a D.C. workout.
POWER-BUILDING ATTACK
“I thought about what makes a muscle grow, what would make it grow faster, and to absolutely stop thinking in this ‘I want to be big so bad I’ll overthink and overdo everything’ concept,” Trudel told FLEX. “Why do people think in terms of ‘annihilating myself into rigor mortis in today’s workout’ instead of progression and recovery over weeks, months, and years? I scrapped everything and reverse-engineered it. I broke it down, took out all the things I felt were just fluff and there for ego and obsessive compulsive satisfaction, and created a power-building attack.”
What Trudel deduced was that bodybuilding gains are directly related to strength gains. Forget pumping up the muscles or shocking them with intensity techniques. Doggcrapp prescribes that you choose, typically, one exercise per body-part routine and focus on growing progressively stronger in that exercise over time. Easier said than done, right? Try to beat your best in the same lift workout after workout and you’ll quickly smash into a wall. Trudel knew this. Avoiding that wall for as long as possible is the rationale behind D.C.’s principles.
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DOGGCRAPP PRESCRIBES THAT YOU CHOOSE…ONE EXERCISE PER BODY-PART ROUTINE AND FOCUS ON GROWING PROGRESSIVELY STRONGER IN THAT EXERCISE OVER TIME.
CRAPPED OUT
Here are the fundamentals. You never do the same exercise for a body part that you did the workout before. Instead, you rotate three workouts, each of which focuses on a different exercise per body part. If you don’t beat your previous best, you drop that exercise from the program and switch in a different one. The working sets are typically done with rest-pause and three failure points. For example, you might fail at eight reps, stop for a few seconds, get three reps before failing, stop for a few seconds, and grind out a final two reps before failing. With the focus on as few as one exercise per body part, you can hit several body parts per workout. Doggcrapp prescribes dividing the body into A and B workouts and training three times per week so each muscle is worked thrice every two weeks with three different exercises. (See schedule.) The program is done for a six- to eight-week “blasting phase” followed by a two-week “cruising phase” of non-D.C. training.
Using Doggcrapp, David Henry packed on 30 lean pounds in fewer than three years, advancing from a 167-pound barely heralded middleweight to a 200-pound-plus pro juggernaut. Steve Kuclo, Cedric McMillan, and Mark Dugdale have also utilized D.C. The fact that none of them do so today isn’t a commentary on D.C.’s effectiveness. No program creates magical results. Doggcrapp isn’t sorcery. But it has conjured up a training revolution. It resurrected rest-pause, an invaluable but neglected technique, and it shifted emphasis away from volume and intensity to strength. Even if you don’t strictly follow a D.C. protocol, focusing on long-range strength gains in specific exercises is a superb muscle-making strategy.
DOGGCRAPP BASICS
Progressive strength gains are paramount to progressive size gains.
Do as many warmups as necessary but only one working set per exercise.
Use restpause with three failure points on most working sets. This set lasts 11–15 reps.
Rotate three groups of exercises. So you will repeat the exercises you do in your first workouts (A1, B1) in your fourth workouts, etc.
Get at least one more rep with the same weight or the same reps with more weight. If you fail, remove that exercise from the rotation and replace it with another.
DOGGCRAPP TIPS
Emphasize the sort of compound basics that let you pack on the most weight. These will allow you to grow progressively stronger over a long period. For example, choose barbell drag curls over concentration curls.
For safety, most quad and back thickness exercises are not rest-paused.
Keep a logbook and bring it to the gym so you always know exactly what you need to do to beat your previous best.
Use a “widowmaker” (a blowout set of 11–25 reps) to finish off weak body parts.
