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Trainer of Champions - February 2005 |
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Written by Charles Glass
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Thursday, 26 April 2007 |
Charles, please settle an argument a friend and I have been having for years. He says the only way you can get to the size of Ronnie, Jay and Gunter is to be born with the genetic potential to be that big. I say that as long as you're willing to train hard enough, eat enough good food and take the necessary "supplements," any man can eventually be 260-300 pounds ripped. Who's right?
You're both right, in a sense, but I'm going to have to lean toward your friend as far as accuracy goes. Genetics play a huge role in bodybuilding, which I thought most people understood. But bodybuilding is hardly unique in that respect. How many men are between 6-foot-3 and seven feet tall and have the speed and agility to play in the NBA? Look at Michael Phelps, who won six gold medals for U.S. Swimming in Athens last summer. I read in Sports Illustrated how he has the perfect genetic structure for being fast in the water: a tall man with a disproportionately long torso and arms and short legs- not unlike a human seal!
In bodybuilding, various factors go into the making of a champion. First is structure. If a man is going to be 300 pounds ripped, he'll need a big frame, and he needs to be close to six-feet tall or better. A short guy with a light-boned, narrow frame is probably never going to be a mass monster no matter what, because he doesn't have the structure to support that much mass. Next you have to look at muscle insertions. The big men all have long muscle bellies that insert at, or close to, the joint, at least in most of their muscle groups. Occasionally you'll see an otherwise huge man with weak calves or biceps because those muscles just aren't very long.
A very critical genetic factor that will determine how big and heavy a man can become is related to how fast he grows and how easily. This may be related to the expression of the myostatin gene, with these champions having very little expression to limit muscle growth. That's why these guys blow up right away once they start training, even if they don't train very well and their diet is poor in the early years. Their muscles were destined to be big from birth and any type of resistance training will start bringing that out. Conversely, there are other men who can train hard for 20 years and never be as big as these gifted men were after just a year or two of training. Jay Cutler is a very good example. He started training at age 18, weighing 180 pounds. Just a year later he was weighing 240 and competing at almost 220. By age 24, he was a pro, competing at 250 pounds at only 5-foot-9. Meanwhile, there are bodybuilders I have known personally who trained for 15 or 20 years and never competed at much more than 190 at that height. Jay was meant to have huge, almost cartoon-like muscles, and the other guys weren't.
You may think I'm dodging the role of steroids. I really would prefer to dodge it because it's just not smart to draw any more attention to that aspect of bodybuilding these days. But since I think you're in danger of possibly hurting yourself and endangering your long-term health, I do feel it's germane to briefly discuss the role these "supplements" play in how big a bodybuilder can get. The bodybuilders of the ‘60s and ‘70s took very minimal amounts of drugs and relied far more on hard training and plenty of quality food. Arnold Schwarzenegger was nearly 6-foot-2 and in his prime competed anywhere from 230 to 245 pounds. Nowadays, you have some guys at that weight who are only 5-7 or 5-8, with a lot less body fat and water, I might add. So the higher dosages of "supplements" have been key in the much larger and heavier bodybuilders we see today.
But you can't discount genetics. Unfortunately, many bodybuilders today lack the genetics to be in that elite group of "freaks," yet they are convinced more and more drugs will get them there. Besides the fact that you can't get huge, and I mean really ridiculously huge, unless you have the right genetics, abusing "supplements" in this manner is an exercise in futility. These guys shut down the androgen receptors in their muscles on these mega-cycles and are forced to use more and more each time just to keep the gains coming in small amounts.
I maintain that besides genetics, good training and especially good eating are the keys to growing. I recommend that everyone work with a nutritionist to lay out an individualized eating program, since we all respond differently to various ratios of protein, carbs and fats. Beyond that, bodybuilders should take the least amount of "supplements" necessary to foster muscle growth. Despite what so many Internet drug gurus preach (and you shouldn't be listening to these nameless morons, anyway), more is not better when it comes to these powerful and potentially dangerous items. If you are meant to be huge, it really won't take much of those products to help you get there, and please don't try to prove me wrong. I've been around this game an awful long time and I know what I'm talking about.
Do you think it's better to train arms on their own day, or should you pair them up with another body part, like chest, shoulders or back? When you've had clients who needed to bring their arms up, were there any other ways you'd arrange their arm training for better results?
There is no single best way to bring up the arms. What I do is mix things up so the arms are always getting a slightly different form of stress placed on them. At times, we will indeed work arms by themselves. At other times, we will shock them by training biceps with chest, or triceps with back. One thing I don't like to do is to train biceps after back, or triceps after either chest or shoulders. I feel they are so fatigued already from assisting with the compound movements for those large torso muscle groups that they can't possibly be worked properly afterward.
I do feel that working arms on their own day is probably the most effective method for getting them to grow, but not everyone has time to devote an entire training day to arms. A lot of busy people can only get in the gym three times a week at most, so that leaves them to train legs on another day and the entire torso on the third day- which is a lot of exercise for one workout. If you do have the time, train arms on a special day devoted to them, but don't keep that up forever. Eventually, they will adapt to that and you will need to start shuffling them in with other muscle groups. For now, assuming you have the time, try this arm workout for four to six weeks:
Barbell curls 4 x 10-12
Weighted dips 4 x 8-10
Incline dumbbell curls 4 x 10-12
Skull crushers 4 x 10-12
Reverse barbell curls 3 x 8-10
Rope cable kickbacks 3 x 8-10 (each arm)
Charles, as someone who has been a full-time personal trainer for many years, I hope you can help me. I've been a trainer for less than a year, since I left the telecommunications field. I'm a happily married man, 32 years old, and have a four-year-old daughter. The problem is that several of my female training clients have become very flirtatious with me and have indicated in various ways they'd like to pursue a sexual relationship. All these women are also married, except for one who's engaged. All they do is complain about their men and tell me how wonderful I am, and I have to admit it's all very tempting. But I don't want to be unfaithful to my wife. Also, another trainer at my gym who has slept with a lot of his clients told me they all stopped paying him for training once they got intimate. I don't want to offend these female clients and lose them, and I don't want to do anything I'd regret or that would cause some jealous husband to show up at the gym with a gun. Can give me a little guidance here?
You have run into one of the most frequent occupational hazards of the personal training profession and it was bound to happen sooner or later. The underlying reason this happens too much is that a trainer gives his or her client their undivided attention during their workout sessions, at least a good trainer does. Here's what happens quite a bit, though I am by no means suggesting this encompasses all these situations. Very often a woman has the time and the money to hire a trainer because her husband makes a very good living. To earn all that money, this husband may have to put in very long hours and doesn't always have the time or energy to devote to his wife that he once did. This leaves the wife starving for attention and affection. When a woman is starving in this way, she usually finds a way to meet those needs.
Enter the personal trainer. You may be younger, in better shape and more attractive than her husband. But more importantly, you listen to everything she has to say and you are there for her when you're supposed to be. It's very easy for trainers to become involved with their clients, but you can't let that happen. If you do, several repercussions are almost sure to follow. First, people will find out or pick up on what's going on and your credibility and reputation will be destroyed. Trust me, in gyms with a lot of trainers, there are always a couple who make it their business to find out everyone else's business.
Second, as you saw with the trainer at your gym, once you sleep with a client, she ceases to be a client. She will continue to expect you to train her, but be outraged if you continued to expect payment for your services. Third, what you do would reflect poorly on all personal trainers, and as a man who respects the profession, I hate to see anything tarnish our image. We are educated men and women dedicated to helping others reach their fitness and body composition goals, and we always fight against the stereotype of the half-witted, self-absorbed musclehead some of the general public assume trainers are.
What you need to do when this client of yours gets flirtatious is to talk about your wife and kids. Make it clear you are very content with your marriage and your family and have no interest in doing anything to hurt them. Keep it all on a professional level and soon she will have more respect for you than ever. You can let her know you're flattered by her interest, but she hired you to get results in the gym, first and foremost. You can still be friendly, of course, but always keep that professional distance between you.
I have a very bad injury to one of my rotator cuffs. I figured out how to work around it on chest and shoulder days, using mostly machines and cables instead of my usual free weights. The injury doesn't really bother me on anything else. I'm just wondering, will this injury heal itself? It's been two months since I hurt it and it doesn't feel like it's getting any better.
It doesn't sound like you have been doing anything to try and rehabilitate the injury, which is why the pain persists. The problem stemmed from a weakness in the rotator cuff muscles and until that situation is resolved, you will continue to have problems with your cuff. You should know the simple cable or dumbbell exercises used to strengthen those small muscles. If not, do a Google search on "exercises to rehabilitate the rotator cuff" and a few hundred links will appear.
You should also be applying both ice and heat on a regular basis. I and many other bodybuilders and athletes I've known have experienced an injury similar to yours. In nearly every case, taking the time twice a week to strengthen the rotator cuff, as well as icing and heating the area, made the pain go away and allowed us to resume heavy training again. You should also figure out which exercises aggravate the injury and avoid them. As you probably know, pressing or pulling down behind the neck is a risky move for a lot of trainers, but even other movements like upright rows and holding a bar for squats have been known to cause trouble in the cuff. If you follow this advice for a few months and the problem persists, you should definitely see your doctor. You really don't know for sure whether your problem is the rotator cuff, though it probably is. A referral to an orthopedic surgeon and an MRI would accurately identify the injury for what it is, and the proper course of treatment could be taken, which in extreme cases may involve surgery.
Charles, I think you had one of the best physiques around when you were competing. It's been about 10 years since you did the Masters Olympia, if I'm not mistaken. Now that the judging seems to be rewarding shape and symmetry, I think it would be a great time for you to make a comeback. What do you say to that?
Let me say that I'm very honored by your compliments, but I'm very content with being a trainer now rather than a competitor. I get so much gratification out of seeing my clients onstage and making improvements from show to show, I can't even put it into words. One thing I don't miss from the old days is how uncomfortable it was being so heavy. At 5-foot-8, I used to get up to 245 (though my waist has never been over 28-1/2 inches in my life) and it was killing me. Keep in mind that I'm a pretty small-boned man, so that was like another bodybuilder at that same height weighing 275 or 280. My joints were in pain from the heavy training; I used to bench press 500 and squat 550. Worse, because I got into shape pretty easily, I never did any cardio. So at 245, I would walk up a short flight of stairs and be huffing and puffing like I just climbed a mountain!
My last show was the 1995 Masters Olympia in Atlanta and the only reason I did that show in the first place was that someone bet me I couldn't get in shape again. I knew my body so well that I dieted for only four and a half weeks and took fourth behind Sonny Schmidt, Robby Robinson and Patrick Nicholls. I was 205 pounds at that show and the other guys who beat me all had at least 20-40 pounds more muscle. These days, I'm 180 pounds and I feel great. I'm happy at this weight, I'm in great cardiovascular condition and I can move around easily. Honestly, physically, I feel like a 20-year-old rather than a man in his fifties. So again, I am glad you think I would still do well, but I am truly finished with competing as a bodybuilder.
What do you think about nighttime eating to keep your body in a positive nitrogen balance while asleep? A lot of guys have a protein shake in the middle of the night and I have even heard of a few bodybuilders who will eat a whole solid-food meal at three or four in the morning. Do you think this is a good idea or a waste of time?
Personally, I would never do this because I only average about four and half hours of sleep a night. I'm in bed by 10:30 p.m. and usually get up at 2:30 a.m. to be in the gym training my first client of the day at 4 a.m. So, I certainly wouldn't waste any of that precious time getting up and eating, but then again, I'm not trying to gain muscle these days.
Your situation is probably quite different. You probably sleep eight or nine hours a night and are still in the process of trying to grow. In that case, a shake would be a great idea. MuscleTech has a product called Nitro-Tech Nighttime that you would be interested in. It gives you time-release protein so your muscles have a steady supply of nutrients while you sleep, keeping your nitrogen in a positive balance and helping you avoid slipping into that dreaded catabolic state. I wouldn't get up and have a whole meal, because that would certainly have a negative impact on the duration and quality of your sleep. Who do you know that can wake up, sit down and eat a meal, then get right back to sleep? Good luck with that. Go with a shake so you can get back to sleep and grow.
Flex magazine seems to be promoting this Russian kid Alex Federov as the man who will take over the Olympia from Ronnie Coleman and keep the title for many years. Personally, I will admit that he's a really big guy, but I'm not overly impressed with him. Do you think he's the future of pro bodybuilding, or is this just a lot of hype?
Just a lot of hype. The kid could have been good and I'm not taking anything away from him, but he has already torn a pec and has what looks like another torn muscle in his upper back. If he's already getting hurt this badly in his mid-twenties, I can't see him being around the sport a whole lot longer. Even if he does stick around, these muscle tears are destroying his symmetry. As big as he is and as ripped as he gets, without good symmetry he can't compete against the best men in the world like Ronnie, Jay and Dexter.
Comments on the 2004 Mr. Olympia
I'll start with congratulating Ronnie on his seventh Mr. Olympia title. It was pretty cut and dried once again. Personally, I would have Dexter Jackson winning the show, because I think he has the absolute best physique today.
I need to talk about the Challenge Round. I'm not as violently opposed to it as some people seem to be, but it needs to change. My main issue of contention is that they basically wiped out the scores from the prejudging and started from scratch with the top six guys. This gave some men the opportunity to move up who didn't deserve to. By turning it into a war of specific poses, you turn the Mr. Olympia into a body part contest, when it's supposed to be about who has the best overall package. I know this whole Challenge Round was just invented to hype up the contest and sell tickets. I knew ticket sales must have been slow because they had 20 percent-off coupons at Gold's! Unfortunately for me, I had already purchased 30 tickets for my clients, including 10 VIP tickets.
I actually left right before the Challenge Round started because I knew exactly what would happen. Gustavo would move up past Dexter based on a couple of freaky body parts he has, and that's exactly the way it transpired. I left because I would have gotten upset seeing that play out. Physiques are supposed to flow together. I also wasn't happy with a couple of guys having obvious Synthol lumps and not being penalized for it. Maybe I'm just a dinosaur, but I think muscle should be something you work hard for, not something you can inject in five minutes.
As for my two clients in the show, like I said last time, Chris Cormier did not have his heart in this one. He was still bitter and disappointed from what happened to him at the Arnold and that prevented him from going all-out for the Olympia. Until just four weeks out, Chris was only training sporadically. At that point, he realized how close the show was and got his butt in gear, but it was too late. He did manage to look a little better at the two Grand Prix shows he took second place at, but this is not how Chris looks when he puts his heart and soul into winning a contest. We saw that back in March at the Arnold. His seventh place at the Olympia was quite fair.
Gunter was my other client in the Mr. O, and he looked so much better on Thursday and Friday. By Saturday, he had spilled over badly and was holding a lot of water. At that point, there was nothing we could do about it. We all get carried away with size and wanting to look big and full, but Gunter is 300 pounds! He doesn't need to worry about looking flat. His primary concern needs to be on his conditioning. He panicked and ate too many carbs in the final phase of the carb load, and the razor sharp cuts got blurred over. If you saw him Thursday or even Friday and then again onstage, your first question would be, "What the heck happened?" But this is all a learning process and changes will be made. Gunter's training is going to be overhauled, and I plan to pull up all his body parts. Everything needs to improve and it will.
In general, I thought the Olympia ran pretty smoothly this year, though I would still like to see some different faces on the judging panel. Sometimes the judges get preconceived notions as to how a certain competitor is supposed to look, or they are only looking for a few top men in the lineup. Often, newcomers get overlooked, like this kid Craig Richardson. I thought he looked awesome, but he only got a couple of callouts. Troy Alves is another guy who looked fantastic, yet failed to get a good look from the judges.
Ronnie and Jay only got a couple of callouts in the beginning, then they were placed back in the lineup. That's not right. It should be like the IFBB Worlds, where every competitor is compared to everyone else. It may take a little longer, but all these guys put tremendous time and effort into preparing for the Olympia. They all deserve to be compared to the best. Ronnie and Jay could have been worked a little harder and compared to more of the men in the show. That's just my opinion, of course, as a former competitor and fan of the sport.
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