Chris, I know this is a bodybuilding magazine, but the war in Iraq is affecting all of us. I wondered if it's upsetting you to see what's going on, and if you would be willing to share your opinion on whether or not U.S. troops should still be over there?

            I don't mind speaking my mind on this subject. I say bring ‘em home right now! The Iraqis are getting totally ruthless over there with Americans.  Look what happened to that poor Berg guy who had his head sawed off. He wasn't even in the military. I didn't see the video, but I was still tripping out over that. Those guys are cold-blooded, man, like damn serial killers or something. I don't see any reason for us to be over there anymore. We got Saddam out of power and we caught him. We shouldn't be the ones putting the country back together, because a lot of them resent us for even doing that. They want to govern themselves and do things their way, so why not let them? It's their country.

I hate to sound unpatriotic, but if I were serving over there now, I would go AWOL, break my leg, do anything to get out and get home. My older brother Terrell Barlow served in the Army for 25 years. He was a Sergeant Major during Desert Storm and was stationed all over Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Terrell is now a realtor, thank God, and lives in San Antonio, Texas. He knows a lot more about the situation over there than most of us civilians ever could, and even he feels it's time to pull up stakes and get out of Dodge. I hate to say it's a war we can't win, but if we can "win," the costs in terms of lives lost and billions, maybe trillions of dollars that could have been put to much better use isn't worth it.

            You have given out advice to a lot of up-and-coming bodybuilders and I imagine some were using steroids and others were not. I'm a bodybuilder who has chosen not to use them, just because that's my personal preference. I have been training on a four-on, one-off split similar to what most of the pros do, but I haven't made any gains in several months. I am considering doing something like two-on, one-off, or maybe even every other day. Do you think it's a good idea, because I'm starting to think I may not be recovering from my workouts and this is why I'm not growing lately.

            It's very true that performance-enhancing drugs like steroids help you recover a lot faster from workouts, and that drug-free bodybuilders need to incorporate more rest days. A lot of it also has to do with your lifestyle. If you have a stressful job with long hours, and especially if it's physical in nature, you would probably get overtrained on a four-on, one-off schedule. If you also have kids and/or go to school on top of working, I would say that's definitely too many consecutive days of training for you. It would be different if you had an easy part-time job and could sleep 10 or 12 hours a day. You should try two-on, one-off for a few weeks and see what difference that makes. But your lack of results may not have anything to do with recovery. You may have just reached a stalemate, a plateau. 

I have known guys on full-on steroid cycles who stopped making gains at some point, and it wasn't due to overtraining or under-recovering. You may just need to change things up. Change the exercises you do, change your workouts. Try supersets and giant sets, higher or lower reps than what you're doing now, even doing your reps slower or faster. You might even consider joining a different gym where everything will be fresh and new, from the equipment to the faces you see every day. Try increasing your protein intake so you stay in positive nitrogen balance. In fact, I know this great little company named MuscleTech that makes some supplements you should try. Nitro-Tech and Cell-Tech are two very popular products that could put a new spark in your training.

Really, there are so many possible reasons why you may not be making gains that it's almost impossible for me to accurately tell you what the problem may be. Start getting more rest days, and if that doesn't do the trick, look at all the other suggestions I gave you. We all hit sticking points at one time or another; it's just the nature of the human body. Don't get too worried about it, just fiddle around with a few things until you start gaining again.

How intense should cardio be for a bodybuilder? I know some guys say to just walk briskly on a treadmill, while others like Skip LaCour say you should go as fast as you can, but only for 15 or 20 minutes at a time. Where do you stand on this issue? I want to get ripped, but I don't want to lose any muscle either.

            I tell you, when it comes to cardio, I have done it all over the years. I have tried the Flex Wheeler way, where you barely break a sweat. I have tried the Pano Fragoulis way (Melvin Anthony and Stan McQuay's trainer), working up to all-out sprints for a minute or two and then backing off to recover- what most people call interval training. Eventually, I settled on something in between. I keep a good pace, not too easy and not too strenuous. You do have to breathe hard and sweat, though; of that I'm convinced. Don't think you can just cruise doing your cardio and burn fat.

            The "talk test" is a good gauge. You should be able to keep up a conversation with the person next to you, or on your cell phone, but it should be difficult. And I don't think 15 or 20 minutes is long enough to do the job right, either, not if you're trying to get ripped like a competitive bodybuilder. I find that for me, two sessions a day of 40-60 minutes works best when I'm getting ready for a show like the Arnold Classic or the Olympia. I like to do my first cardio bout first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, on the Precor elliptical trainer I have at home. I do my other session of cardio immediately following my second weight training workout of the day (I train twice a day on a double split).  As long as you are eating sufficient protein and not going crazy running your ass off on cardio, you shouldn't lose any muscle mass.

I just bought Ronnie's new DVD and I can't believe he eats out four times every day. I'm sure he isn't hurting for money, but that's gotta be costing him a ton of money. How often do you eat out, and if I may ask, do you cook for yourself when you eat at home?

            I don't like to cook; it's just a pet peeve of mine. That's not to say I can't cook. I am pretty good at barbecuing chicken and steak when I want to. But I would much rather not have to do all that work and spend so much time cooking if I don't have to. I'm staying with my parents now that I'm back in Los Angeles, and my mom cooks. So, it's about half, or maybe a little more than half my meals, that I eat out. 

            Being close to Venice Beach, Marina Del Rey and Santa Monica, there are literally dozens of places that serve up clean bodybuilding-type of food. Just in one square block, you have Fresh to Go, the Firehouse and Koo Koo Roo.  Firehouse is a little pricier, but Fresh to Go and Koo Koo Roo give you a lot of good food for a very reasonable price. I eat at those places on average twice a day. The problem with eating out in a lot of parts of the country is they aren't as tuned into healthy eating. Trying to find food that isn't smothered in sauce, butter or oil, or that isn't fried, can be a challenge. If you don't have many places around with healthy choices, or if you're on a budget, you are better off cooking for yourself. Of course, the ultimate bodybuilder fantasy would be to have a wife or girlfriend who would cook all your meals for you every day, just the way you like them prepared. But they don't make women like that anymore, so keep dreaming!

            I'm going to start working in the woods, cutting and lifting trees and shrubs, in about a month. This will be eight hours a day, Monday through Friday. I'm currently eating about 3,500 calories a day, but what do you think would be a good amount to eat when working eight hours lifting heavy logs, and still being able to train in the evening? And should I take some sort of recovery drink/meal during the day to compensate for the hard work being
done, or just eat regular meals? And, is there something I'd be better off not training at all in the gym when I'm working like this, or should I just reduce the sets?
             That sounds like a job that will be very physically demanding. With all that activity and the heavy lifting, I would certainly recommend you increase your calories, maybe up to around 5,000 a day or even more, if you find yourself tired and losing weight. Don't be afraid to eat a good amount of carbs and healthy fats either, because I guarantee you will be burning them up hauling all those tree limbs and logs around. I don't know if your schedule will permit you to eat regular meals every two hours during the day, but even if it did, I have to wonder if having a full stomach most of the day would make your job more uncomfortable. Ever try lifting weights right after you eat? Not good.

             I would try to have a big breakfast before work and a good lunch. Between breakfast and lunch, and between lunch and the end of your workday, I would either drink a Meso-Tech shake or have a Meso-Tech bar. These are Meal Replacements. If even those aren't enough calories for you, they just came out with Mass-Tech, a weight-gain shake that gives you a full 1,000 calories per serving in skim milk. You can also munch on high-calorie snacks like nuts throughout the day, but be sure to drink plenty of water, too.

             As far as the gym goes, I would say you probably want to stick to straight sets of everything for six to 10 reps. I would stay away from drop sets, forced reps and supersets. You don't want to be too sore doing that job. You probably shouldn't do any direct lower back training like hyperextensions or good mornings, due to all the lifting you do. My last tip would be to get a pair of good Schiek gloves so you don't tear up your hands too much and get a bunch of oozing blisters handling all the rough bark. Wait, I do have one more thing- do as little physical activity on the weekend as possible so you can rest up for the coming week. That's just common sense, but I thought I would throw it in there because common sense ain't too common these days.

My hamstrings are pretty flat compared to my quads. When I turn to the side, it's really obvious that my quads dominate and my hams are weak.  You seem to have great development in both, so I wonder if you have any tips I can use to start getting my hams looking like yours?

            Before I get into my suggestions, I do have to say up front that great hamstrings are usually a genetic gift. A lot of people deny this or don't want to hear it, but it's true. I have yet to see someone go from having no hams to having big hanging, hams like Tom Prince. People always want to know my training secrets for how I get those crazy knots and bulges in my hamstrings when I flex them. The truth is, I had those since I was a little kid, maybe five or six years old. I would flex them for other kids or adults and they thought something was wrong with my legs. And Tom Prince, I remember seeing that cat the first time he competed at the Ironman like 10 or 11 years ago. He had gigantic quads and hams even then. I don't mean to discourage you, because you certainly can improve the size and shape of your hamstrings. I just don't want to get your hopes up too much. You don't assume that training your arms like Lee Priest will have your guns looking like his, right?

            Anyway, here are some things you can start doing right away that will get your hams growing. First of all, don't train them on the same day as quads, or if you do, train them first. In fact, I would do one total leg workout a week, with hams first, and another workout later in the week just for hams. Try all the leg curl machines at your gym and find the three you feel the muscle contracting the most with. Those should be the ones you use. This is my hamstring workout right now, just to give you an idea of what I mean:

Lying leg curl                                      5 sets of 25 reps

Hamtractor (seated leg curl)                        4 sets of 20 reps

Kneeling one-leg curl                                    4 sets of 20 reps

Two points I want to make about that. Number one, I don't believe in low reps for the hams. They seem to always respond better to sets of 15-25 reps when you can get a really good pump back there. Number two, I do the reps for hams faster than I do for all my other muscle groups. It's a muscle with a lot more fast-twitch fibers, built for speed and power. That's why Olympic-level sprinters always have great hams, usually better than your typical bodybuilder.  I don't particularly care for stiff-leg deadlifts, because I think you can hurt your lower back on those. I don't think they are that great for building size, anyway.  Stretch your hams between sets to increase your range of motion and to make the workout a little more intense.  

MD Exclusive!
Road to the Olympia - Early June, 2004

 After my spring shows were over, I took a couple of weeks off from the gym, got back for a couple weeks, then took another couple of weeks break. I want to make sure my mind and body are ready to go all-out for the Olympia, and to do that I need to be fully rested up. Some things in my personal life have changed for the better and I am getting back on track. I'm really looking forward to the GNC and Olympia shows. I still have a few people to deal with, Real Deal style. Dexter Jackson feels he is the second-best bodybuilder in the world right now after Ronnie. I need to show him and everyone else they can't just leapfrog over me. Every year they hype up someone else. Last year it was Gunter and Jay, now it's Dexter and Jay. It doesn't matter what happened at some show in the past. There will be different judges at the GNC and Olympia, with different opinions and preferences.  

You have to realize Dexter is only 5-foot-6 and 220 pounds on stage compared to my 5-11 and close to 260. It makes a big difference when a man has that much more height and meat than the other guy. We all know Dexter has no cuts in his quads, and his shoulders look pinched. When he hits a front lat spread next to me with my broad shoulders, he looks like a little kid. You know, Dexter only did the Ironman ‘cuz I told him I wasn't doing it. "Are you sure?" he asked me on the phone. I'm starting to wonder if he beat me in Australia because the judges felt pressure after complaints that I had won the show three years in a row, like it was fixed, since I'm a friend of the promoter.

    All I'm trying to say to Dexter is don't act like I can't beat you on any given day. He used to be a lot more humble, but lately he seems to think he's unbeatable except when Ronnie is up there with him. Look dawg, anyone can get beat. If my psyche is as good for the fall shows as it was for the Arnold Classic, I will be very dangerous. I just have to make sure nothing blocks my focus or interferes with my preparation. 

            Want some figures? My weight is right at 280 now, but I'm just starting to intensify everything for the shows. I might get up over 290 before I start whittling it down for the GNC and Olympia, where I should be about 260 and just as ripped as I was at the Arnold. I am getting in touch with Chad and having deep-tissue work done more often. The fall shows are still a long ways away, but I am starting to feel the fire burn inside me already.