When I sat down to interview rising superstar Mark Dugdale about his back-training a few weeks before he became the overall 2004 USA bodybuilding champion, I was somewhat shocked by the first words
out of his mouth. “My back sucked,” the normally soft-spoken Dugdale told me. “I feel as though it still needs to improve, but the gains I’ve made in the last two years have been incredible. I did heavy deadlifts for years and just went nowhere. I was frustrated by the fact that I was busting my butt and training heavy, as I did for my legs with squats, but my back continued to lag behind. Finally, I decided I couldn’t continue training the same way and expect a different result, so I radically changed my back-training. I dropped the deads and started to focus completely on feel, not simply moving as much weight as possible from point A to point B. The results have been phenomenal. Don’t get me wrong. I still train as heavy as I can, but my focus is on feeling the back muscles through the entire range of motion. So I guess you could say I made one major change … I switched my focus from poundage to feel. I still think my back needs to be better, but I’m confident that I’m on my way.”
TRAINING
Build your lower triceps!
Have you noticed that most triceps exercises work the upper part of the area, yet it is the lower part of the triceps that should be worked if you really want your upper arms to look and feel impressive?
When you add mass to the lower tris you add balance to your arms, and balance makes a good arm look utterly amazing!
The other day a young man came into my office with a perturbed look on his face. “I’ve got big arms,” he said almost apologetically, “but they still don’t look impressive. People comment on the size of my arm mass, but no one tells me my arms look great.”
“Let’s take a look,” I said and, with little enthusiasm, the shirt was slowly removed. His arms were big all right. Each arm the size of hams hanging from his side. But, as he said, they lacked impressiveness. At first I considered that his arms were not eye-poppers because his bodyfat level was too high, but the young man soon kyboshed this idea when he flexed his triceps. They were cut to ribbons. Then the answer came to me. The appearance of these big arms was wrecked because there was a lack of balance. His triceps had no development in the lower area near the elbow.
Workout to Muscle Failure
There are a lot of debates about necessity of reaching muscle ‘failure’. This is quite a new technique; lots of athletes trained without it and achieved sufficient results. Before we decide whether we need it, let’s first find out what is it.
Failure is recognised as such muscle fatigue gained during the last set repetition when you are unable to overcome the weight with correct movement biomechanics.
There are three types of Muscle Failure: positive, negative and static.
Positive Muscle Failure arises when you are unable to lift the weight without outside assistance: for example, when performing Bench Presses you cannot lift the barbell to the required upper point.
Negative Muscle Failure arises when you are tired to such extent that you are unable to control even the process of weight lowering; the barbell is ‘pressing’ you. This failure type is also often called an ‘absolute’ one because further work with the weight is absolutely not possible in any sense.
Lactic Acid: Use Your Pain!
Lactic Acid and Muscle Burning Pain
Muscle burning pain appears to be the sign of lactic acid activity in muscles. Is the following situation familiar to you: you perform numerous Barbell Curls and your arms start burning; it becomes so painful that you have to stop doing the exercise? Why does it happen? Is lactic acid our fried or foe?
You should remember that muscles can restore their energy supply by different means: both using oxygen (aerobic way) and without it (anaerobic way) when glycogen supply turns into ATP molecules that our organism requires. Exactly this way leads to lactic acid production performed by our muscles. In a normal state of our organism lactic acid is removed from muscles with the help of blood rather quickly; during workout, however, the bloodstream in an engaged muscle is hampered (blood is pumped in the muscle and doesn’t leave it); and lactic acid can remain in the engaged muscle for long enough to cause burning sensation.
How to Train Your Pecs
If you have a hard time feeling your chest working when you do chest exercises, THIS is the information you need. I’ll give you my best techniques for ensuring maximum activation of your pecs with every set and rep you do. One of the most comment training questions I get with regards to chest training is simply not being able to feel the pecs working at all when doing chest exercises!
And when you can’t feel the pecs working, you know darn well that actual muscle development is simply NOT going to happen.
So enough about the problem…how do you FIX it?
I’ve got a number of techniques for you to try out, some of which may work better than others for you.
But they should get you well on your way towards the chest development you’re looking for.
1. Pre-Exhaust Training
When performing a movement like the bench press, the pecs are definitely involved but can be easily pushed into a secondary role by the front delts and the triceps.
So instead of doing a regular bench press movement, you will instead do 6 to 8 reps of dumbell flyes (an isolation movement for the chest) THEN immediately go right to the bench press.
Workout and exercises for contest preparation.
DAY 1
SUPERSET BACK WORKOUT
1. Cable Rear Pulldown + Cable Underhand Pulldown – 4 sets with 10 reps each.
2. Barbell Bent Over Row + Cable Seated Row – 4 sets with 10-12 reps in each set
3. Cable Close Grip PullDown + Lever Wide Grip Seated Row – 4 sets with 10-12 reps for each.
You can add here some exercises for the body parts which need more attention or you can do some abs.
DAY 2
SUPERSET BICEPS AND TRICEPS WORKOUT
1. EZ Barbell Biceps Curl + Cable Standing Biceps Curl – 4 sets with 10-12 reps in each set
2. Seated Barbell Curl + Lever Preacher Curl – 4 sets with 10-12 reps in each set
3. Biceps Hammer Dumbell Curls+ Two Arm Cable Curls 3 sets with 10-12 reps in each set
TRICEPS WORKOUT
Get Big Muscles In 3 Steps
1.Squat and Deadlift
Squatting and Deadlifting are known as two of the Big Three exercises that are responsible for power and mass muscle building. These two exercises alone, work out about 75% of your entire musculature, including your traps, shoulders, arms, back. Gluts, hams, calves and core muscles.
Not to mention the degree of intensity, squats and dead lifts force your body to release greater volumes of growth hormone, which results in bigger muscles all over your body. This spillover effect results in strength gains in all you other lifts which translates into a more muscular you! Squatting and dead lifting are especially critical for hard gainers because of the hormonal spikes affecting the entire body.
2.Stick to Compound Exercises
What is going to isolate more muscle fibers? A bench press or cable cross over? A military press or lateral raise? A chin up or bicep curl? A dip or tricep kickback? If you ever hope to get big muscles than compound lifts are not optional, they are mandatory. Stick to squats, leg presses, deadlifts, bench preses, barbell rows, pull ups, chin ups, over head presses, and dips.
If all you do is concentrate on building your puny muscles like arms and calves, then you will end up with exactly what you focus on – puny muscles!
Get Bigger & Stronger Muscles
The primary difference between the effects of rep ranges on the adaptive response depends on whether the load affects neural factors (low reps) or metabolic factors (higher reps). When you train with low reps (1 – 5), the adaptations that make you stronger are mostly neurological: You develop an increased ability to recruit more muscle fibers, you stimulate the higher threshold fibers that are not activated with high rep, low weight sets, you decrease neuromuscular inhibition, and there is increased coordination between the muscle groups. However, with low reps, the hypertrophy (size increase) of the muscle fibers is minimal.
In other words, reps under 6 make you stronger, but they don’t necessarily make you bigger because the strength gains come from adaptations in the nervous system – the muscle fibers and other muscle cell structures do not hypertrophy (enlarge). This explains why certain athletes, powerlifters and Olympic lifters can be wicked strong but they don’t look as strong as they are.
When you train with medium reps (6-12) the adaptations are more metabolic and cellular and only moderately neurological. This is why 6-12 reps is the range most often recommended for bodybuilding and hypertrophy. You get bigger and stronger in this rep range, but your strength gains are not maximal. This explains why some bodybuilders look stronger than they are (and why they are often the brunt of jokes made by powerlifters and weight lifters; i.e. “big, weak, slow, useless muscles”, ha ha).
How Does Muscles Increase
Fifty years ago, the physiology of muscle hypertrophy (growth) was a mystery. A common perception among many athletes and coaches was that training turns fat into muscle. Scientists didn’t have the tools to study muscle growth; the technology wasn’t available. That changed in the 1960s and ‘70s- the development of the electron microscope, muscle biopsy techniques and radioactive tracers allowed scientists to look inside the muscle. Now, we know that increasing muscle strength and size involves turning on special genes to manufacture new muscle tissue and training the nervous system to better coordinate and regulate muscle force.
We understand how muscles get larger and have effective techniques for gaining muscle mass with less risk of injury and over-training.How the Body Builds MuscleAbout 20 percent of muscle is protein- the rest is water. Muscles are made up of individual muscle cells connected in bundles. Muscle fibers contain sub-units called myofibrils that are further divided into myofilaments (actin and myosin) that slide across each other to cause muscle contraction. One of the goals of your weight-training program should be to increase the size of muscle fibers by increasing the number of myofibrils, a process called hypertrophy. Most studies show that weight training increases fiber size- not fiber number. Muscle size and strength are directly related- the larger the muscle, the greater its strength.
Tobias Young – Legs
Name: Tobias Young
Height: 5′ 11″
Weight: 198 lbs
Profession: District Mgr, Inshape Health Club, Stockton, CA
Years training: 22 years
WORKOUT
Hack squat, 5 sets, 10-15 reps
Leg press, 10-20 reps, 4-5 sets
Romanian deadlifts 4-5 sets 8-12 reps
Leg extensions 10-20 reps, 4 sets
Leg curl, 4 sets, 12-20 reps
Standing calf raise, 15-25 reps, 5 sets
Seated calf raise, 3 sets, 15-25 reps
Three Moves For Lower-Back Safety
Your lower back is crucial to your bodybuilding success, mainly because it has a role in virtually every exercise. To avoid injury to the critical lower-back area while making it thicker and stronger, include one or two exercises for spinal erectors as part of an overall back routine. Although some gyms have machines devised to train this area, we’ll address three exercises you can do in almost any gym: deadlifts, good mornings and hyperextensions.
Deadlifts In addition to stressing your lumbar region, deadlifts hit your traps, lats and thighs to varying degrees. Deadlifts are as basic as an exercise can get: Start with a barbell on the floor just in front of your shins; bend at the knees, grab the bar and stand up. As easy as that sounds, proper form is paramount for safety and effectiveness. Always lift with your thighs first, keeping your head up. Pull the bar up as close to your legs as possible (it should actually rub against them). An alternate grip (one palm underhand, one palm overhand) will prevent your fingers from giving out before your legs or back are properly taxed, as will training straps. Proper warm-ups followed by sets of six to eight reps will stress your spinal erectors along with other major muscles. Deadlifts should not be performed heavy in every lumbar workout.
ASK MR. O: REP SPEED
Q: I’ve been bodybuilding for four years and I’m still not sure how fast or slow I should perform my repetitions. I often read that the reps should be slow, controlled and steady, only to turn the page to find another pro who says the reps should be fast and explosive. Who’s right, who’s wrong, and why?
A: Both are right. The speed, smoothness, consistency and control of reps vary according to the exercise, its purpose, the bodypart and the ordinal position of the set in your workout.
THE EXERCISE
Repetition speed will vary, depending upon whether the exercise is performed with cables, free weights or a machine. Since resistance with cables is consistent over the entire range of motion, the most effective use of cables is by means of slower repetitions, with a pace that is consistent through both the contraction and extension phases.
With free weights, the moment of force, or resistance, varies through the arc of the movement: At some points, the weight feels heavier than at others, just the opposite of the sensation associated with cables. You have to apply more power at those higher resistance points than at others, which means you have to accelerate or decelerate your repetition. Free weights are thus more effectively employed by repetitions that are controlled but slightly more explosive.