The Bodybuilding Bible

Training Bodybuilding
281

[quote]SteelyD wrote:
You learn this very quickly after injury as well. One thing a back injury did for me was set me right for the rest of my life on warmup, mobility, and proper stretching, pre and post w/o. When my hip flexors, glutes, and/or hams are tight, my whole body knows it.[/quote]

Yep - it took me two back injuries to really learn stetching, mobility and dead-lift form.

Whats the bible got to say on post-wo stretching? I currently don’t do any. I’m typically wasted by the end of a wo and just don’t have the motivation but I’m not sure how much I might be missing out.

282

[quote]Kvetch wrote:

[quote]SteelyD wrote:
You learn this very quickly after injury as well. One thing a back injury did for me was set me right for the rest of my life on warmup, mobility, and proper stretching, pre and post w/o. When my hip flexors, glutes, and/or hams are tight, my whole body knows it.[/quote]

Yep - it took me two back injuries to really learn stetching, mobility and dead-lift form.

Whats the bible got to say on post-wo stretching? I currently don’t do any. I’m typically wasted by the end of a wo and just don’t have the motivation but I’m not sure how much I might be missing out.[/quote]

When I first started lifting, I asked someone who always seemed to stretch before and after lifting. This is basically what he told me about stretching post w/o (he explained it better and in a more sciency way though, lol):

After you workout your muscles are damaged, then they will begin to repair. If you don’t stretch after, the muscles will repair shorter than they were before. This leaves you less flexible and thus more prone to injury.

283

[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
The static stretching thing is bullshit. How effective can you be in the weight room when you’re jacked up. Besides, like Ian King said, even if static stretching does relax your nerves a bit–what goes down can go up–and your nerves will get revved up again in subsequent warmup sets.

Jim Wendler, a 1000-pound squatter, said that, in heyday, he couldn’t squat properly unless he started off his lower body sessions with static stretching.

Muscles that often get jammed up are the hip flexors, lats, glutes, hip adductors and abductors, erectors, and traps.

My warmup was more lengthy when I was more jammed up after I become so tight from shitty programs (experimenting with shit like GVT and HST jammed me up so badly I had to see a chiropractor). I learned about real training and warming up.

Because I’m far looser and balanced structurally now, I need less of a warmup. For me, it’s 3 to 5 minutes on the treadmill and then another 10 minutes of dynamic and static stretching. I do a lot of the mobility drills pushed by Eric Cressey: bird-dogs, fire hydrants, toy soldiers, over-unders with the Smith machine, butt kicks, and so on. I also do some glute-activation drills on my lower body days.

I stretch my hip flexors, lats, and traps EVERY time I work out. [/quote]

Avoiding stretching before working out is to me one of those looks good on paper but doesn’t pan out in the real world. I think it was Cosgrove who had a great way of phrasing it along the lines of

“Squat your 5RM on the squat and then 2 minutes later try to hit a 1RM…couldn’t do it? Great I just proved weight training makes you weaker”. Upper body days I always try to do the broom stick stretch for a couple sets of 15-30 reps to loosen up the shoulders, very light rotator and scapula work… and THEN warm up progressively for my first exercise. Lower body I like to start with some slow jump roping, foam rolling and or some of the mobility moves you talked about… no problem breaking PRs that way. It takes me 10 minutes to warmup tops. Extreme stretching after training a muscle but that’s a whole different topic.

Stretching is not the devil

284

[quote]Bricknyce wrote:

[quote]austin_bicep wrote:
Squatted today with the bar on my lower traps. Did not lean over nearly as much when it was high, however the amount of weight I moved remained relatively the same as last week. [/quote]

Are you sure you’re still retracting your shoulder blades and flexing your lats when you switch to a high-bar position.

The lower-bar placement DOES create a forward lean and this is beneficial for powerlifters because with this forward lean the erectors and glutes become more involved and allow them to move more weight in addition to shortening the lever arm (distance between the bar and the waist).

High-bar placement allows for a more upright stance and more quad development, hence why Olympic lifters and bodybuilder use it. [/quote]

idk lol, I need to play with it a bit, maybe it’s all in my head lol. Just relaying what Evan and his trainer Oscar Arden(not sure if that’s the spelling) said.

285

[quote]pumped340 wrote:

[quote]doubleh wrote:

[quote]austin_bicep wrote:

Alright well Evan demostrated how to squat properly. Said it was good to stretch everything including chest before squats.

Evan really emphasized stretching. Said it helped prevent injury. Says he didn’t give stretching and warming up too much importance as a youth and that was a mistake. The whole bull shit of stretching making you weaker seems to be bull shit.

If I didn’t explain something clearly, please ask.[/quote]

Great post, thanks for sharing.

I am in total agreement about the stretching. I had always stretched thoroughly before liftng (lower body anyway), both dynamic and static, until a few years ago when I heard about those studies claiming static streching before lifting can contribute to as much as a 10% decline in strength. Hell, a lot of coaches on this very site were saying the same thing - stick with dynamic stretching only.

Lo and behold over the next year or two that I followed this advice, I had more nagging injuries than I had in the previous 10 lifting weights. I also finally realizd that my performance was not 1 iota better for having done so. In fact, I felt better moving heavy weights when I felt fully loose, rather than the lingering tightness I experienced that giving up static strecthing had left me with.

Back to static stretching for me.[/quote]

Just out of curiosity, what types of stretching do you do to warm up the muscles. I notice I have to keep my first few warm up sets relatively slow otherwise my joints feel a kinda screwed but have never really done much stretching, probably in part because of people mentioning things like it hurts stretch and to not stretch a cold muscle (the 2nd part is something I’ve always heard, seems right but I’m not really sure).
[/quote]

My warm-up for lower body is basically dynamic stretching: BW squats, walking lunges, tin soldiers, and a few more I don’t know the name. I get a sweat going doing these. Then I will start warm-up sets with weight on the bar, and begin the static stretching in between warm-up sets. By the time I get to the work sets I’m good to go.

I don’t really do much static stretching for upper body, as my warm-up gets me pretty loose.

286

[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
The static stretching thing is bullshit. How effective can you be in the weight room when you’re jacked up. Besides, like Ian King said, even if static stretching does relax your nerves a bit–what goes down can go up–and your nerves will get revved up again in subsequent warmup sets.

Jim Wendler, a 1000-pound squatter, said that, in heyday, he couldn’t squat properly unless he started off his lower body sessions with static stretching.

Muscles that often get jammed up are the hip flexors, lats, glutes, hip adductors and abductors, erectors, and traps.

My warmup was more lengthy when I was more jammed up after I become so tight from shitty programs (experimenting with shit like GVT and HST jammed me up so badly I had to see a chiropractor). I learned about real training and warming up.

Because I’m far looser and balanced structurally now, I need less of a warmup. For me, it’s 3 to 5 minutes on the treadmill and then another 10 minutes of dynamic and static stretching. I do a lot of the mobility drills pushed by Eric Cressey: bird-dogs, fire hydrants, toy soldiers, over-unders with the Smith machine, butt kicks, and so on. I also do some glute-activation drills on my lower body days.

I stretch my hip flexors, lats, and traps EVERY time I work out. [/quote]

Ditto Brick, I pretty much stretch everything every time I’m in the gym, although if I am working upper body exclusively, my lower body warm-up/stretch is less intensive, and vice-versa.

My must-stretch list is the same as yours (hip flexors, lats, traps), + hamstrings and groin. Also forearms, but that’s more prevention related to an old wrist injury.

287

[quote]babaganoosh wrote:

[quote]Kvetch wrote:

[quote]SteelyD wrote:
You learn this very quickly after injury as well. One thing a back injury did for me was set me right for the rest of my life on warmup, mobility, and proper stretching, pre and post w/o. When my hip flexors, glutes, and/or hams are tight, my whole body knows it.[/quote]

Yep - it took me two back injuries to really learn stetching, mobility and dead-lift form.

Whats the bible got to say on post-wo stretching? I currently don’t do any. I’m typically wasted by the end of a wo and just don’t have the motivation but I’m not sure how much I might be missing out.[/quote]

When I first started lifting, I asked someone who always seemed to stretch before and after lifting. This is basically what he told me about stretching post w/o (he explained it better and in a more sciency way though, lol):

After you workout your muscles are damaged, then they will begin to repair. If you don’t stretch after, the muscles will repair shorter than they were before. This leaves you less flexible and thus more prone to injury.
[/quote]

That makes little sense. But if you want to stretch after, that’s fine too.

288

Hmmm. Broomstick stretch etc (dynamic?) before, extreme/weighted/static stretching after in my case.

289

I always use this mobility drill on lower body days and I do the broom stretch from time to time on upper body days. So far so good.

290

About my use of the word “jerkoff”…

Look guys: I think everyone on here knows by now that I have a tendency to let shit just come out of my mouth, or more accurately, come out of my keyboard.

I didn’t mean that either Branch Warren or Victor Martinez, two of the best bodybuilders in the world, are actually jerkoffs as people or that they’re incompetent. They’re IFBB pros - of course they’re competent! Two of the best EVER!

A more accurate thing to type would be: I can’t relate to the way they train but I respect them and their style works for them.

And folks, what this comes down to the most is HEART! You can’t change your genetics. Even if someone has genetics, they might be mentally incapable or lazy for this. Dorian Yates didn’t have the best genetics amongst his peers but went on to be, at one time, the best bodybuilder in the world because of his calculated nutrition and training methodologies. It was from his extreme discipline and effort (read: HEART) that let him follow through on those methodologies.

You might have heart and have a poor training program or form. Easy to fix: straighten out your routine and form.

But heart… you can’t teach that. I don’t even know if it can be developed!

I remember people on here used to rip on the infamous Deasel Weasel (Max). He’s from my area and I’ve met him in person twice. Yeah, true, a while back, this guy’s form was ABYSMAL and he was rightly criticized and wrongfully ridiculed for it. He straightened out his form and regularly competes in Strongman and powerlifting now. He’s not the biggest, gifted, or strongest guy around, but he has improved a great deal. And above all, he had HEART from the beginning, something that even allowed him to make improvement. People made fun of that guy; I bet dollars to doughnuts that those same people don’t attend the gym as regularly as he does or already dropped out of this whole thing!

291

By “Broomstick stretch” I assume you mean the one going back and forth from the front to the back of your body while holding the ends of the broomstick? Sometimes I do feel tight/just off when starting my workouts so anything like that that could help prevent injury would probably be good for me to start doing

292

[quote]pumped340 wrote:
By “Broomstick stretch” I assume you mean the one going back and forth from the front to the back of your body while holding the ends of the broomstick? Sometimes I do feel tight/just off when starting my workouts so anything like that that could help prevent injury would probably be good for me to start doing[/quote]

I think you should get Magnificent Mobility by Mike Robertson and Eric Cressey.

293

[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
I’ve seen Vic in person a few times at Bev Francis’ Powerhouse Gym. [/quote]

I live in that area, but have never been to that Powerhouse.

Do you live in the area?

Ever train at Infinity in Farmingdale?

294

I haven’t been to Infinity in Farmingdale.

I train at Powerhouse Gym on Francis Lewis Boulevard in Bayside, Queens.

I live in Little Neck.

295

Quick Question:

Is an advantage of the BB split that your body parts get more of a chance to recover through the week and this allows for a lower chance of overuse injury as well?

My shoulders have always clicked and popped a little, and it’s been a little more prominent on a 2x a week push/pull split (legs 1x a week). I’m thinking of making the leap over to the split that has been described ad nauseum here to stop hitting my shoulders directly and indirectly up to 4 times a week. If I switch splits, I can probably add in 2-3x weekly rotator cuff rehab-ish exercises to do to lower the chances of a current minor annoyance developing into a full blown shoulder problem.

Thanks.

296

Not sure if this was covered, but is it important to feel the “pump” after each workout session? thanks

297

[quote]tomkade wrote:
Not sure if this was covered, but is it important to feel the “pump” after each workout session? thanks[/quote]

What matters is progress in size and strength. Pumping up a muscle MIGHT contribute to some growth. The ABILITY to pump a muscle does say something though. If you can’t get a pump in a muscle, chances are it’s one of your weaker bodyparts. Strong bodyparts can get a pump from doing the most mundane stuff, like shaving, washing your hair, walking up a flight of stairs, carrying groceries, etc.

298

[quote]ridethecliche wrote:
Quick Question:

Is an advantage of the BB split that your body parts get more of a chance to recover through the week and this allows for a lower chance of overuse injury as well?

My shoulders have always clicked and popped a little, and it’s been a little more prominent on a 2x a week push/pull split (legs 1x a week). I’m thinking of making the leap over to the split that has been described ad nauseum here to stop hitting my shoulders directly and indirectly up to 4 times a week. If I switch splits, I can probably add in 2-3x weekly rotator cuff rehab-ish exercises to do to lower the chances of a current minor annoyance developing into a full blown shoulder problem.

Thanks. [/quote]

Dude, are you seriously telling me that you haven’t yet settled on a program?

299

Brick, how do you feel about deloads? How would you personally structure one for bodybuilding purposes?

300

[quote]pumped340 wrote:
Brick, how do you feel about deloads? How would you personally structure one for bodybuilding purposes?[/quote]

I outlined that in this thread somewhere.