I don’t have much experience being President. But I’ve been powerlifting for years. This discussion is exhausting. If your technique works for you, use it.
Yesterday I did heavy Kroc rows, a newish exercise for me, which fried my upper back. When I tried to bench press today, it was obvious I wasn’t going to be able to do decent weights and should wait until I have better recovered. I could have benched a smaller weight and maybe it would have targeted other muscles. But if the total weight is less, to what benefit?
My lats get crazy sore from benching to failure/Heavy benching in general. It’s kind of funny, you don’t really realize what a critical role your lats play in your bench until they’re sore as all hell the next day!
If it is concerning putting on muscle, why would you think your method is the best, when you don’t have much muscle doing the “correct” method? It would seem most logical for you to believe that you are, at least, missing something, considering what you have to show for your efforts.
Lots of people think the lats play no role in raw benching. One presumes they never make an arch or move their elbows below their back when the bar is at the chest. Of course if you bench heavy the load will be widely divided.
When a small, weak person is asked to post body, they’ll tend to respond with an incoherent argument about why not doing so doesn’t affect their credibility (like you did here).
When a big, strong person is asked to post body, they’ll post body.
I recognize your opinion of me is very low and you’re not going to take anything I post seriously, but I still find myself compelled to point out how silly this is. I find this very symptomatic of the Internet age, which has democratized every voice. That’s great on the surface, but it has led many to the mistaken viewpoint that all those voices are equal.
Long ago, in the olden days, if we wanted to hear from someone, we’d have to go hear from that person. For that to actually happen, that person had to have some level of accomplishment, achievement or accolade that would bring an audience.
That’s no longer the case, as the “buy-in” to an audience is just turning on your phone. This seems to have created the inference for posters that their opinion is just as valuable as anyone else’s. It isn’t. We’re all entitled to our own opinion, but each of these opinions is not equally valuable.
Here, you seem to have taken that concept even a step further; you are now making the argument that achievement simply doesn’t matter. Someone who has accomplished something, whether it being winning the White House or multiple Olympia titles, is meaningless. The implication here is that you, or anyone, should only listen to a voice with which you already agree; an absolutely backwards way to go about learning.
You’re certainly entitled to tell me why I’m wrong or, more likely, tell me I’m an idiot. I am preemptively telling you you’ve given me no reason to take that opinion at value and look in the mirror. Since neither of us appears to be in this discussion to learn from the other, that might actually be ok… even desirable.
Most of you guys aren’t arguing against him, you’re arguing against a 6 time Mr Olympia, and the Publisher of Muscle Mag International who wrote 50+ books on bodybuilding and discovered Cory Everson and Ronnie Coleman.
Who are any of you jokers to question Dorian Yates and Robert Kennedy?
Following this thread leads me to the conclusion that it boils down to a question credited to Dr Phil:
Do you want to be right? (Arguing the best program) Or do you want to be happy? (Improved physique)
Most would believe that OP wants to improve his physique. He asks a question and gets various different responses, and then proceeds to put all his energy of defending his method, and strongly attacking anyone who disagrees with his believed best method.
I would be hoping to improve my physique and not caring the least bit whether I had suggested the best method that could likely lead the best results.
When I followed Mike Mentzer’s Heavy Duty I and II routines, I got a ridiculous pump from pre-exhaustion for chest, although I definitely noticed that my fly strength increased way more than my incline press, which didn’t really move. I was only inclining 185 for about 4 at the time(at least right after doing flys) and the lack of progression on incline press really bugged me. It didn’t affect my strength gain on squats that much but that might be because my legs were so comparatively weak at the time, so they had more room to grow. I had Intermediate/early advanced Upper Body and Beginner legs.
I may just have to revisit pre-exhaust to give a more updated opinion on it. I wouldn’t do leg curls right into hamstrings though lol… For back I’d probably do like a straight arm pulldown into a conventional wide grip Pulldown.