A Question About Alleged Natural Contests

Training
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Oh… thank you, I misinterpreted the comment.

I worry about potential injury though, I’m prone due to medical ailment (complicated medical history). I TRY to be careful, but eventually in the gym I’ll get carried away. I try stay fixed towards high volume, light/moderate weights.

I’m sure I’ll eventually get my arms up to par, just like some have stubborn quads, chest etc… my arms appear to be very stubborn. I’ve found that direct work 2-3 x weekly tends to trigger far more growth comparative to cutting out direct arm work in favour of compound lifts only. Theres a body of people who advocate direct arm work isn’t required… I’m not so sure about this. Sure, they’ll grow without the implementation of isolation exercises, but to max out potential growth I’m a firm believer that direct arm work is required.

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That might not be as detrimental as it seems.

If it keeps you from self inflicting mechanical injuries how bad is it really?

149

How much do you weigh? Height? And are you lean or chubby?

How long have you been away from the gym?

150

5’5, about 74kg

Avg, not lean (16-17%)

I’m looking for tips specifically regarding how to build up my arms… I’m fine with everything else. There’s the argument of “they’ll build themselves up proportionately”… this hasn’t been the case, just about everything tends to grow at a faster rate. I’ve gone from 60-74kg over the past couple years, arms have gone from 14-15 now down to 14.5… everything else has grown tremendously

151

For bodybuilding, I think the best approach to any lagging muscle in experienced people is pre-exhaust and proper exercise sequence and picking the exercises best for your frame. So, with biceps, an example would be concentration curls before barbell curls, and for triceps, extensions before triceps dips. I brought up my pecs up considerably In just six months or so with this approach. I have pics to show it.

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152

What?!! It can’t possibly be that simple!! -lol

S

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153

How frequently do you believe body parts need too be individualistically trained for say… an intermediate level bodybuilder? I’m aware it differentiates via individualistic response… Is 1x weekly enough? or is 2-3x weekly preferable. I’ve seen data conclude that it doesn’t really matter so long as sufficient volume (sets/bodypart/wk) is achieved.

Say a brosplit of

Chest/tri
Back/Bi
Shoulders
Legs
Arms

Or

Chest/Tri/Shoulders
Back/biceps/accessory (neck, forearms, abs etc)
Legs
Chest/Tri/shoulders
Back/Biceps/Accessory
Legs

Do you prefer deadlifts on back day or leg day? Do you split quads/hams within two differing workouts so you can add more volume?

I wish to hit certain parts multiple times weekly, but I also find cardio to be very important, if I train each body part 1x weekly it leaves enough energy to get in a few long runs/cycles… but will it reap decent gains? I’m not sure… I’ve found I grow best via volume… but if I stop training the gains are quite fleeting in nature. I was muscular prior to leaving Europe (quite muscular compared to the avg man, a tad off 170 at 5’5 with a bf% of around 15)… having taken 6 weeks off in Europe, coming back here, getting injured… then getting the flu I’ve lost soooooo much, I’m hoping to regain everything within the next 8-12 weeks… doesn’t seem entirely unrealistic

@The_Mighty_Stu this is my last question, I apologise

154

When I first got into training I had some serious frequency, I didn’t know anything about diet and recovery. Eventually, I backed off a little and made progress for a while, but again, I can see in hindsight how poor my attention to the nutrition side of things was.

Now, I am not going to tell you I didn’t make progress, because I trained for years before ever stepping on stage and certainly came a decent ways from where I began.

When I did finally get serious about my training, paying much more attention to diet, and after that first contest made friends with people much more advanced than I was, I bumped up my frequency and my volume to the point where I was hitting body parts twice every eight or nine days in the off season. This is after 15 years of training already mind you, and I started making progress much quicker, and steadily year by year despite the fact that I was almost 40 years old.

It just goes to support what Bill pearl always said, as you get more advanced your body can tolerate and even grow from more work. And competitors weren’t anywhere near being the walking pharmacies that you see on stage these days -lol

S

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155

@The_Mighty_Stu Would you be able to throw up an example of how you set up your week to hit each body part twice and what you mean by bumping up your volume?

Not surprising, but once I re-added in an actual arm day, my arms started improving again… It’s had me thinking recently about frequency and volume. How much of the improvement is just because of direct arm work and how much is because I’m now hitting them more often and higher overall volume? (Bis directly on arm day and indirectly on back day, tris directly on arm day and indirectly with chest/shoulders). I’m now looking at experimenting with other body parts and options of how to set up extra chest/back/legs. Just increasing frequency is easy, but how to balance volume with that is the tricky part.

As I’m coming up on 40 this year and with 25+ years training, I’m looking to tweak whatever I can to get whatever improvement/growth may be left. I do know when I started training and during periods over the years when I had higher frequency/volume, I improved. Instead of just going blindly back to what I did in the past, I’m curious as to how others set up high frequency/volume.

156

My go-to split was usually a Chest/Calves, Back/Bis, Delts/Traps/Tris, and Legs/Core split. I could usually train 7 days a week, just running through the 4 different routines, and then repeating on day 5, or sometimes even throwing in a single rest day when I felt I needed it but before going back to Day # 1. It was nothing genius or earth shattering, just training hard and ensuring that my nutrition and rest were on point so I would be able to make the most of what I was trying to do.

Volume? Man, I’m gonna go so far against what some of the authors here write about, but I can honestly, and I mean I’m not selling anything, writing articles, trying to get millions of following on social media liking my shirtless pics every day honestly tell you that almost every top competitor on the natural circuit I competing in (as an amateur and a pro), spoke to as a coach, traded stories and experiences with as a judge or any such interactions did exactly the same as I did.

3 sets of 10 reps? Nah, 5 sets of 5 reps? Maybe, Worrying about total sets each workout, or even sets per bodypart per week? No one truthfully worth their salt trying to improve and not give two sh-ts about gaining followers was worrying about that -lol.

I’m sure anyone who trained with me back then (Brad the first time we hung our, Colucci when we met up at Bev’s one day and he just followed my lead…) but read everything they could online started off wondering WTF when I kept doing set after set,… never pushing to exhaustion, or “failure”, but racking up quality, hard straining and productive reps, regardless of how many sets I was doing.

If the point everyone starts out at is 3 sets of 10 reps,… that’s 30 reps. Now imagine you want to do sets of 5 reps each. That means you’d need 6 sets. Suddenly you’ve got authors screaming OMG that’s too many sets! -lol. Nah,… I’d do 5 of 5 just for one exercise and then feeling good move on to my next movement. For chest, I might do 4 different exercises, with 5 x 5 of each pressing movement and 4 x 12-15 of each isolation movement, and then throw in a couple of sets of pushups as a little finisher, and then still move on to some calf work after that.

Did it work? Yep! After 15 years of training and making progress I suddenly said F_ck it and went against what every online expert/author who had never won a contest was screaming that you needed to follow in order to make progress. I started having my clients do more work, and it yielded plenty of results (You guys know I had Rob Stein and Brad/Brick, as well as a few others, make muscular GAINS during contest preps right that resulted in pro cards right? -lol)… I didn’t need anyone online cherry picking pub-med studies to agree with me, my results and my clients’ results were all the proof I needed. Besides, it totally aligned with what the real old school bodybuilders did, long before you had guys on boatloads of drugs just to place 3rd in an amateur contest.

S

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157

Thanks, Stu, I really appreciate the response!

Sometimes, well usually, I’m glad I started training before the internet was much of thing. I just went in and trained…using books, so something new every couple of months/year, or just doing what I felt. When I was 17-18, I picked up Arnold’s Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding and went with it. Over the years I’ve read how this program will burn you out in no time and lead to overtraining, but I made my best gains off it. Also, sometimes I would get together with a buddy and we’d just train, finishing when we were done, not when a certain number of sets said we were.

A year or so ago, I got back into body building (type of training, not competing), after a number of years focused more on powerlifting and a year or two before that on conditioning (work aspirations). While I’ve increased my volume, even now I’ll read an article and have to pull myself back from jumping on the newest idea; though, I also admit I’ve fallen for it a number of times as well. The recent stuff that’s come out about volume/frequency sounds really good and is sold well, but something never really sat right with me and my experience. I don’t think it’s bad, just not magical or necessary to worry about.

I really like that split set up you put up there. For some reason I never thought about pairing Tris with Delts, but it makes sense! I’m definitely going to start upping the volume and I’ll see what happens.

This is one of the reasons it’s awesome to have guys like you, Rob and Brick around here. I don’t post much, but read a ton and you always bring some reality to the conversations.

-Ben

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158

@Tougher Did you ever view my contest prep thread?

159

Yeah, I remember seeing that a couple years ago! Checked in once in a while, but missed a bunch, because I was in the middle of my “powerlifting phase,” and wasn’t following much around bodybuilding. I’m going to go back and work my way through it this weekend. Thanks for reminding me about it!

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160

I just took a look at you’re contest prep thread and I have to reiterate… You’re jacked… You look better than 99% of guys on gear… As a matter of fact, you look better than all the guys in my gym on gear…

ALL
OF
THEM

Except for one guy who is probably an ifbb competitor (goes to gym, pumps up, takes pics for social media)… This guy is like Mr Olympia classic physique level jacked though… He sweats excessively all the time (common side effect of tren, though I don’t like to make assumptions)

You’re big… So how strong are you? I’ve found that whilst size doesn’t always equate to raw powerlifting style strength, I’ve been hard pressed to find someone with arms like yours that can’t either

  • bench 225 for many reps
    Or if he can’t, he is
  • very, very proficient with dips

One or the other… same with you’re quads, haven’t met anyone with quads like yours that can’t squat heavy weight.

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Recent studies actually reached the consensus that muscle group appears to be driven by volume. We don’t need as much “rest” as initially thought, the prospect of “overtraining” only particularly pertains to elite athletes and/or those who train strenuous compound lifts (deadlifts etc)… Deadlifts for instance done 3x weekly with high reps (say ten/twenty rep sets) and heavy weight would extensively tax the CNS, neurological demand/stress induced on the body would be immense… a natural (and probably even an enhanced) athlete would burn out from this. You’re hunch (about more volume equating to more growth) was right

I have a question for you pertaining to bodybuilding in general… If you don’t mind me asking

  • cardio… how much emphasis should we put on cardio?
  • Direct midsection work? Yay or nay? Should one specifically target rectus abdominis or is direct work for the obliques, serratus etc beneficial?
  • Forearms? Direct work? Some say they get enough stimulation from pull-ups, deadlifts, pulling movements…
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I doubt it. Which ones?

163

Hints 5x weekly may be more effective than 2x weekly… this is the abstract, full study diagrams can be seen here

Higher frequency said to be potentially superior to lower frequency training

2x weekly (meta analysis) appears to be more effective than 1x weekly

You’ll find an equatable body of data stating training frequency doesn’t particularly matter, that 1x = 3x weekly… but there is one thing most studies agree on… volume is highly correlated with level of hypertrophy (sets per week)

Whilst genetics and perhaps drugs will play a role within my theoretical example I’m about to give… look at the arms, lats and shoulders of professional gymnasts who specialise on the rings (particularly biceps though)… that’s a ton of volume, day in day out… Some of these guys have arms (and arms only) that you’d expect to see on a bodybuilder

Do I think they use drugs… probably, but rather minimalistically. As a gymnast the goal is to stay light, elicit the minimum amount of hypertrophy whilst maximising strength… stay injury free.

164

Volume was equal in those studies frequency was different.

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165

Shit, I was referring to frequency… whoops

I meant high frequency training… got confused, I apologise

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166

from menno. resting only a minute or less in between sets is probably detrimental for muscle growth rather than beneficial