In a few months marks my 3rd year of hardcore bodybuilding/powerlifting and id like some criticism on my physique and what body parts are lagging. Right now I’m 17 years old and am standing at 200lb and i estimate around 11-12% body fat. sorry i don’t have that great of picture of my legs
Update on my training: Been working on my arms 3 days a week these past few weeks to bring them up a little bit. They are currently measuring around 16in. Ive had to put a halt on my chest training for now since i did tear a tendon in my right pec. thankfully it wasn’t that bad and I’m able to atleast bench the bar for 15 reps now. My right pec was always my dominate one and was a little bigger than my left so this has given me time to focus on my left pec a little more and do more isolation to it. I still do heavy dumbbell presses with it to keep my strength from dropping and lost of volume for it. It currently approaching the size of my right pec now, id say probably just a 1/4 in off. I’ll keep working hard on recovering from it to get my strength back so i can train hard again. This injury is limiting my back and shoulder training as well since i can’t do heavy presses for shoulder or chest on that side and cannot deadlift either as the weight pulling down on it stresses it to much and am currently limited to cable rows and light pull downs. I’ll keep you updated in the coming weeks about everything.
I would post these in the bodybuilding section. I don’t think the guys you want to talk to (like Stu for example) really post in here. There are a lot of seasoned bodybuilders in that section that can give you an honest critique.
Not for nothing, but the thread is most appropriate in here. The Bodybuilding forum is more specifically for physique sports and competitors, not the general term “bodybuilding” as most people use it. We can always tag guys like @robstein or @the_mighty_stu to try grabbing their specific attention towards a thread.
As for the physique, I’d vote to focus on back and arms. They look better in some poses more than others (which is why posing sucks for progress pics unless you really know what you’re doing), but in most of the pics, arms appear to be lagging. Relatively speaking, of course. Goes without saying that you’re definitely on the right track and found what works for you, and you’ve got a great build so far.
Impressive for 17 no doubt! Yeah, if there’s any lagging visible, arms are easily noticeable as needing some more attention. Still curious what the legs look like, as well as your height, as 200 lbs at about 10% is very impressive.
What are your future plans? Just keep improving? Eventually step onstage? I’m following along if you’d want to share.
Damn man, great for 17, wish I got started that young!
I agree with the other great posts on here already. In my opinion, your chest needs to fill out more, especially lower chest. Make sure to include some “high to low” cable work in your session.
Also, abs are visible due to low body fat, but could be more developed. Do you do any direct ab training? If so, what does that look like?
Thanks for your input. I agree that my lower chest does need some more work, but most of that is due to my genetics. I was born with an encased chest so i have bad muscle insertions in my lower chest where in some places it doesn’t grow. and i do do ab work but not as much as i should. i train them directly once a week with 5-6 sets of hanging leg raises. but they get a lot of work indirectly throughout the week when i do heavy deadlifts and squats. Thank you for your feedback, i’ll get working on those things right away
Would have had no idea, good work overcoming that! A relative of mine has the same thing, it’ll be good for him to know it can be overcome with enough hard work.
Doing the compound movements and free weights will certainly work abs indirectly and keep them stimulated, but won’t develop them nearly the way direct ab work would. Kind of like saying I do a lot of chest and back which indirectly works my triceps and biceps, so I never do direct arm training.
Abs should be stimulated like any other muscle. Doesn’t take much, the hanging leg raises are good, but try to add some resistance with exercises like rope crunches, or a plate loaded crunch machine if your gym has one. I like to superset rope crunches with ab wheel roll outs, and also the weighted crunch machine leaves me sore for daaaays.
If you hit abs twice a week with two exercises, 5 or so sets each, and make sure at least one of those has some resistance to it, should be plenty and over time you’ll see great development. If you eventually plan to get on stage, you’ll definitely want nice round muscle bellies in the abs so they really pop the leaner you get.
I agree about my arms they need some work,they don’t grow as fast as my other body parts do but some of that is probably me since i hate training them so sometimes i don’t train them as hard as i should.
My height is 5’10 right now and probably done growing. And i’ll include pics of my legs at the bottom.
My future plans are to become an ifbb mens open bodybuilder, i plan to finally step on stage hopefully this september.
I appreciate your feedback!
Very impressed by your vascularity. Only thing I noticed that could use work are your chest and triceps, but I understand that genetically, you got the short end of the stick when it comes to pecs.
Take that with a grain of salt too, I don’t know much at all about bodybuilding (edit: in terms of what judges look for, and what proportions different divisions of bodybuilding consider to be the best), just my own subjective opinion on what the perfect physique looks like. All in all, you are the most aesthetically impressive 17 year old male I’ve ever seen. Keep it up homie
Thank you, i’ll start doing some more abs from now on 2-3 times a week now. Would it be good if i did one day bodyweight exercises,another day weighted exercises, and then a third day with bodyweight and resistance?
you’ve obviously put in some tremendous work at such a young age, well done.
I think I could find things to critique, but unless you actually want to step on stage relatively soon, I’d really just say keep working on everything if your overall goal is open bodybuilding. The fact is, everything has to grow, and over time those lagging parts may catch up anyway, depending on how you train.
Great job man. Great legs! You need to put on some more chest and a little bit more attention to delts… just because you’re are not that wide and you DO have great legs that’s interfering your visual! If you put some Delts and Chest, you will be complete! Able to became a BEAST! 17 YO??? WTF are you doing man… i’m shockeddddddd!
Yeah amazing shape for your age. Splitting hairs, but as said above not that wide, so would stop training traps directly until side delts catch up as this can lessen the V taper look
yea my bone structure isn’t that wide so its harder to look wide for me but ill work on my side debts more often now. and i actually stopped training my traps directly awhile ago because i noticed they grew a lot from all the other back exercises I’m doing
