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Team MD'S #1 CONTEST COVERAGE

 

            Hey, Real Deal, what is up, my man? I hear a lot of smack talk lately between UFC fighter Phil Baroni and pro bodybuilder Craig Titus about how they both think they can kick each other's ass. And on the message boards like GetBig and Bodybuilding.com, there is always arguing back and forth about whether the Mixed Martial Arts guys or bodybuilders would win in a fight. What do you think, Chris? Could Craig beat Phil? Do you think you could beat one of the UFC guys like Chuck "the Iceman" Liddell or Randy Couture?  I know you have a strong wrestling background, so have you ever thought about going into Ultimate Fighting? One thing you would love- if you knock the guy out, you win- no questions asked!

            Well, I sure would like to be in a sport where winning was such a clear-cut decision. But these debates are a bunch of nonsense. It's like arguing about whether Olympic swimmers could beat the guys racing in the Tour de France at their sport, and vice versa. You feel me? Professional athletes are highly trained at their particular sport. These mixed martial arts fighters train for years and years, day in and day out, to be the best at their game. We bodybuilders do the same. They get to be very efficient and skilled at fighting, and our training gives us a physique that looks different from any other men in the world.

Why don't I hear anyone arguing about whether the Ultimate Fighter guys could place top five in the Olympia or Arnold Classic? I guess because right away that sounds ridiculous. Those guys don't train to specifically build their bodies into a certain size and shape the way guys like me and Craig do, so nobody would expect them to look like us. But for some moronic reason, people like to make a big deal out of wondering if all our muscle mass would translate into fighting prowess. It's a macho thing, right? As boys and teenagers a lot of guys fantasize about being big and strong and tough someday, so nobody will ever mess with them. So they look to guys like the MMA fighters and pro bodybuilders as the embodiment of the whole tough guy persona. And then they feel the need to try and figure out which one of us could beat whom in a fight. It's like kids arguing about who would win in a comic book battle, Superman or The Incredible Hulk.

  But let's get back to reality. Craig Titus is not a trained fighter. He can scrap if he has to, but all the confrontations I ever heard about were with other bodybuilders, who he punched once and they backed right down. Why?  Because most bodybuilders are a bunch of pussies. Yes, you read that correctly. Most of them build up the big muscles so they don't have to ever fight, because they don't know how to, and they're afraid to fight another man. Guys who like to fight, guys who never back down from fights, are a different type of person altogether. They are usually from a tough background and often come from a neighborhood where there wasn't a lot of money and it was pretty much a "kill or be killed" mentality.

Take my neighborhood, for example. We had a group of young men there called the Gateway Crips, and they were not to be trifled with. You started a fight with one of them, they would all beat your ass or maybe even put a few bullets in your head. I used to carry a .380 pistol in my car, until my dad found it and confiscated it. This was the year I was training for the Cal, 1990. Then one day right after I lost my piece, three Mexican gangbangers jumped me and I got stabbed. If you look, you can still see the scar about three inches under my right nipple. I didn't have health insurance, so I didn't want to go to the hospital. A friend of mine was an EMT and he sewed me up on his couch. Eventually, I had to cave in and go to the hospital because it wasn't healing right. The doctor said I was lucky the knife hit one of my ribs, because if it had been a half-inch higher or lower it would have punctured a lung. After that, my dad gave me my gun back, because he realized it was necessary for my own protection around that neighborhood. 

As far as my wrestling background goes, even that was tough. When I wrestled in high school, I used to wear a hockey goalie's mask, because whenever my nose got hit, it would start gushing blood and I would have to go to the emergency room to get it cauterized. Nobody I wrestled in high school ever made a big deal about it. But once I started wrestling in college, those guys were out to beat my ass and hurt me. The first thing they would do was rip the mask right off my head and try to bash my nose in. Nice guys, huh? So, I know all about the mentality of guys who fight for a living. They enjoy inflicting pain on other men. I'm not interested in switching to Ultimate Fighting because I'm one of the best bodybuilders in the world and still haven't reached the pinnacle of what I feel I can achieve. But when it comes to fighting, I have been in my share of fights over the years, and I have always held my own. Where I grew up, you had to, or else. So who would win in a fight, Phil Baroni or Craig Titus? Me or Randy Coutoure? A better question is, who the hell cares? 

 

            My question is about rest periods between sets. The gym I train at has a few big powerlifter dudes, and they rest a long time after each set, like up to 10 minutes. Of course, it takes them a long time to get their bench or squat suits on and off, knee wraps, those big-ass belts, all that shit. I'm starting to wonder if I don't rest enough to recover between sets to lift as heavy as I could. For instance, on leg day, I go through all my warm-ups and four work sets of squats for 10-12 reps with up to 405 in less than a half-hour. I think it takes these guys just that long to get warmed up. Do you think I could be using a lot more weight if I started doing things their way?

            Could you be using a lot more weight? Absolutely. But that's powerlifting.  Those guys are doing one, two, probably three reps at the most on their exercises, because their sport is all about putting up the most weight. In general, bodybuilders don't and shouldn't train this way. I like to train pretty fast, myself. I don't time my rest periods between sets, but I know they are never more than a minute or two at the most. This cuts down a little bit on the amount of weight I could be using, but that doesn't matter much to me. I still push some good numbers in the gym.

 I like to keep the muscle warm and pumped when I'm training it and I don't usually get my reps below eight on anything. I also like to keep a fast pace for the aerobic benefits. Some people go really fast with almost no rest from exercise to exercise and set to set, but that's circuit training and really just a way of using weights to do your cardio. I wouldn't recommend that to bodybuilders, either. You don't get bigger or stronger training that way.

So, as far as your question goes, maybe you could train more like a powerlifter at certain times of the year, maybe for five or six weeks in the winter and then again in the fall. You could bring your reps down to five, as I don't think bodybuilders should ever go lower than that, and rest about three to five minutes between your heaviest sets. That way, you could get stronger so when you return to slightly higher reps and shorter rest periods, you'll be able to handle more weight for reps and put more muscle on. You'll probably put some size on while you're doing the power type of training, but I have a feeling your best gains will come when you come back to standard bodybuilding workouts and you're able to use heavier resistance for reps. Give it a try and hit me back in a few months to let me know how it worked out for you.

 

            I hear a lot of bodybuilders say they stop eating bars and drinking shakes in the last few weeks before a contest when they are trying to get really shredded, and just eat whole food. Why is this? What is it about bars and shakes that doesn't let your body get as lean as it could?

            It's not so much the shakes I worry about as the bars. A lot of companies have bars that are loaded with sugar and different ingredients that can contribute to body fat and also make you retain water. I don't trust too many brands, to be honest. In the off-season, I eat a lot of Nitro-Tech bars, because I have been to MuscleTech headquarters a couple of times and toured the facilities. They ain't playin' around up there in Canada, boy. But still, I cut them out at around eight to 10 weeks from a show because I don't really need them.  I get my solid meals and then I have my Nitro-Tech whey protein shakes, which I keep in my diet until a week out from the show.

 I just feel like the body handles solid food differently than it does bars, like it has to work harder to digest real food and that burns more overall calories. If I was someone who worked at a job where I couldn't get to real food more than once during work hours, that would be different. But I'm a professional athlete and eating is a big part of my job. I am fortunate enough to be able to train and eat exactly when I need to, thanks to my various endorsement contracts with MuscleTech, MD and Scheik. So, to sum it up, whey protein shakes are fine, and if you must use bars as part of your diet, read the ingredients very carefully before buying them.

 

            I notice that most of the pros train six or seven days a week and just hit one body part on those days. I break the body up into four days, like this:

Monday:                    arms

Tuesday:                  legs

Thursday:                chest and shoulders

Friday:                       back

On the weekends I do cardio and odds and ends body parts, like calves and abs. I have been getting good results for the past couple of years on four-way splits, but do you think I would be better off splitting the body up into more days? I do work full-time and it would be a stretch, but I think I could manage it if you say it's the way to go. Oh, yeah, before you say anything about doing chest and shoulders together being bad, those both grow very easily for me. That's why I do them on one day.

            Actually, your split looks pretty good to me. I do something similar with the weekends, with a twist you might want to try. What I do is train every day Monday through Friday, hitting the body parts in a five-way split, of course. Then I will choose something to specialize on during a weekend workout. It could be something that needs work, or even just a strong point I want to make stronger. 

            The second workout I do will be with all different exercises from what I did for it earlier in the week. But it all depends. There have been times when I trained 14 days in a row without taking an off day, and other times when I would train one day and then take two to four days off, like if I was starting to get sick or something. You can try breaking your body parts up into five or six days, but I don't think your results will be too much better. What you're doing is working and being in the gym more sounds like it will make your schedule too hectic. If you don't recover, you can't grow. Your split is what you have tailored to your own body, so don't worry about what me or Ronnie or anybody else might be doing.

Road to the Arnold Classic

and Lifestyle Journal, February, 2005

 

            Am I Competing in the Ironman Pro?

            I am writing this a little over four weeks away from the Arnold Classic and two weeks away from the Ironman. I see my name is on the Ironman lineup at "unconfirmed," which only means I never said I absolutely wouldn't do it. I could definitely be ready for it, but I can't seem to find any reason to do that show again. I won it four times in a row already. Let's say I do go in and wipe everyone else out to make it five. What would that accomplish, really? Seriously, if I need a win at that show for added hype, then I'm not one of the world's best bodybuilders. People think I have been skipping the Ironman because it interferes with my ability to peak for the Arnold. That's not true. The fact is, I have never peaked for the Ironman.

So many times you will hear how someone, like me for instance, looked better at the Ironman than at the Arnold. Industry insiders know the real story here- the lighting at the Ironman is the best in any bodybuilding show, bar none. Mike Neveaux is Ironman magazine's photographer and co-owner and he lights that stage so the athletes look just like they do in his pictures. It's the most flattering lighting you ever saw. Everybody looks great, because it shows off deep cuts and makes even guys who aren't that ripped look pretty good. We saw this last year with Gustavo Badell. With the type of thick muscle and deep separations he has, like you see in his legs from the side, the Ironman lighting made his conditioning look crazy. Then he goes to the Arnold the next weekend and all you heard was how much better he looked in Pasadena. That wasn't the case.

The lighting at the Arnold is TV lighting, with a lot of flashing lights and those moving Vari-Lites like rock concerts use. It has the effect of washing out your cuts and making you look like you're not at your peak. The great lighting at the Ironman is also a negative, because it often gives guys a false sense of how lean they are when they see the photos. Let me tell you, if you're slightly off at the Ironman but don't know it and don't do something about it in that last week, you are gonna be one smooth bastard on stage at the Arnold. 

 

            The Arnold is Mine this Time, Fools!

            So here I am, a little over a month away from the most important show of my life. I'm looking and feeling great. As it stands today, I am right on course to be sharper than I was last year when I lost to Jay by one measly point, and will be just as big, if not bigger. I didn't tell too many people, but I had some nerve damage in my leg last summer that caused one of my quads to atrophy in the teardrop area. It affected my leg training so that both my legs were down in size for the Olympia and grand prix shows. Luckily, my legs had enough size already so that nobody seemed to notice, but I sure did.

 I have had the bad leg worked on with deep tissue and other means, and now everything is back up to speed. My legs have filled back out to their usual size and I've been having some of the best workouts of my life in the last couple of weeks. Charles [Glass] has been training me and Mike O'Hearn on legs in the same session. Mike has this rep as a pretty boy, but you don't want to tangle with him on leg day. Homeboy is strong as hell. You know your workouts are exceptional when people are still talking about them at the gym for days afterward. My quads and hams have always been strong points, but they will be even better this time than ever.

            My weight is at 282 and I will probably come down to 255 or 260 by the time I dry out and hit the stage in Columbus. I'm actually heading out to visit Chad Nicholls out in Missouri in a couple days for some fine-tuning of the diet.  He's going to look at me and make a judgment on how many carbs I should be eating in the last few weeks. I have a feeling he's going to have me take them lower than I usually do. Previously, I've had issues with water retention from excessive carbs. I was worried that if I took my carbs too low, I would lose muscle. Now, I think I would have been just as big, but tighter. But it's up to Chad; this is his area of expertise and I will do what he says.   

 

            No Cutler this Time

            People ask me if I'm glad Jay is sitting out the Arnold, as if I feel the need to beat him at this show. Hell, yes, I'm glad! The rest of the lineup is made up of guys I have been beating for years, and now my path to victory has been cleared at last. This is more prestigious to me than the Olympia, and the show that matters so much more than all the other smaller ones I do. I have been competing in the Arnold since 1994 and here we are 11 years later. Most of the guys from '94 are gone now: Flex, Shawn, Paul, Kevin. I'm the last Mohican from the old guard, that's how I feel. And I feel like it's time to shit or get off the pot. I know I'm coming into my final days in the sport, so I'm putting all my effort into winning the Arnold. Back when I was a new pro, it felt like I would have all the chances I wanted to try and win it, but now that I'm 37, the end of my competitive days is in sight. I don't want to be doing this forever. I'm not saying I don't still have a couple of good years left- I know I do- but my clock is ticking.

 

            Max Muscle - the New Hangout

            Before I go, I want to give a big shout-out to Dave Bourlet, owner of Max Muscle in Venice, Calif. Not only does he have all the clothes and supplements for sale, but he has couches set up with TVs going all day with training and competition tapes, and Playstation 2. I like to go in there and play with Tom Prince and Bob Cicherillo. I kill them on any sports games, so we challenge each other on fight games like the new Fight Club. A lot of tourists come by the shop. The other day, two young kids from England were in the store and told Dave I was their favorite pro. Dave called my cell and I happened to be right in the neighborhood and dropped by. The kids were thrilled and promised to take me out to eat the next time I get to London. It's always cool making new friends and I appreciate all my fans for supporting me in this tough sport. Dave's store was one of the first to carry my new DVD, and he will probably be carrying the clothing line I'm working on, called "Thug Inc. Streetwear." It's going to be tracksuits and warm-up suits, very cool stuff. I will keep you up to date, or you can always check http://www.chriscormier.com/ for updates. Wish me luck at the Arnold!

 

Got a question for Chris? E-mail it to him through the "Ask MD" page on http://www.musculardevelopment.com/.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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