The 10 Best Lifts for Mass

With Dennis Wolf - 2014 Arnold Classic Champ

It’s now been close to two and a half years since Dennis Wolf stood on a contest stage. In the interim, he suffered a serious neck injury that knocked him out of training and forced him to lose a substantial amount of size. Now, he is poised to make his comeback at the scene of his greatest career victory thus far, the Arnold Classic. The entire bodybuilding world is waiting to see just how well Dennis has been able to bounce back from his setback. In the meantime, let’s look at how he built that magnificent physique in the first place.

They Don’t Call Him ‘The Big Bad Wolf’ for Nothing!

At six foot and 270 pounds on contest day, Dennis Wolf is one of the most massive men to stand under the bright lights on a bodybuilding stage. As such, he knows a thing or two about building thick, massive muscle. And he’s just the guy to demonstrate 10 great exercises you can use to get huge, too! Dennis also shares his opinions and experiences to offer perspective on the impact these key movements have had in crafting his outstanding physique. Whether or not you will ever get as big as The Big Bad Wolf remains to be seen, but rest assured that hard work on these 10 movements will take you ever closer to your maximum potential size.

Barbell Bench Press

We lead off with a lift that has achieved iconic status over the past 70-odd years not only among bodybuilders, but to anyone who has ever trained with weights, be they kids in their basement, football players in the team’s weight room, or guys hoping to get bigger and stronger in gyms all over the world. It’s been the measuring stick for strength to untold legions who seek to hoist more weight in the bench press than their peers, and need to ask “how much ya bench?” just to make sure it’s not more than they can. But far more importantly for our purposes, it’s a superior compound movement for building bigger pecs. “This is the big daddy of chest exercises,” Dennis says. “It allows you to use the greatest loads and work the most amount of muscle. Do the reps slowly and squeeze the chest, or else you will get stronger but your chest probably won’t grow much.”

For the first 12 years he trained, Wolf would bench press at nearly every chest workout. In more recent years, he has switched to more dumbbells and machines, yet still keeps the bench press in his rotation. “I bench press once a month now, and even then I don’t like to go very heavy.” Of course, four good sets of 10-12 reps with 315 would be considered very heavy by plenty of guys, but it’s not a tendon-straining amount of iron for the Big Bad Wolf, and that’s the whole point. “I like to do the reps in very good form, with a solid squeeze of the pecs at the top of each rep and a good stretch as I lower the bar slowly.” And even though he doesn’t do it as often anymore, Dennis still recommends that beginners pay their dues on it. “It’s the absolute best exercise to build a foundation with. Just be sure you use it the right way to build muscle, not just worrying about how much weight you use and doing just a couple of reps.”

Hammer Strength Bench Press

What on earth is a machine doing on this list? It’s true that basic free-weight movements are the staples of accruing greater muscle mass. Yet you can’t deny that some modern machines are also incredibly effective. Both six-time Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates and 212 division legend and former world 202 champion David Henry used their fair share of machines to pack on thick, dense muscle, particularly when it came to chest and back training. Yet still a certain stigma seems to be attached to using tools such as the machines produced by Hammer Strength, especially within the hardcore bodybuilding community. Machines were something Dennis too once looked down on somewhat when it came to pressing, until he started thinking more for himself and stopped worrying about what others did and advocated.

“The Hammer Strength incline press machine has been very valuable for me because it targets my upper chest perfectly,” he tells us. “If I avoided it because people say machines are no good, I wouldn’t have been able to get the extra thickness up there that I have now.” Dennis likes that machine so much that even if he started his workout with incline dumbbells, he will usually make his way to the incline Hammer piece later on also. That’s not to say he doesn’t make use of other Hammer Strength chest machines too. “Sometimes if I feel my outer or lower pecs need to be a little thicker and fuller, I use the wide or the decline press machines.”

From my own experience, all of the Hammer pieces for chest pressing are excellent choices. They all feature independent movement arms, which means that just as with dumbbells, it’s impossible for a stronger side to dominate. The movement arms travel inward toward the midline of the body as you press, allowing for intense, complete contractions of the pecs. Since you don’t need to balance a bar, you can focus entirely on the feeling in the muscle. Ideally, you should do a barbell or a dumbbell press first while you’re fresh, and then move on to a Hammer Strength machine afterward.

Barbell Rows

You know how we often ask a pro, ‘what’s the absolute most effective exercise for this or that body part?’ Dennis didn’t hesitate in naming the barbell row as the one exercise that has given his back the most mass. “Haney, Dorian and Ronnie all had incredible backs, and they all did a lot of heavy barbell rows. That’s not a coincidence. It’s very close behind the deadlift for being the top choice for building a thicker back, and for me it’s actually contributed the most.”

Though he doesn’t use the underhand grip that Dorian made famous, you’ll notice that Dennis does pull the bar to a very low point on his torso, lower than his navel. “My upper back has good size now, so I focus everything I can on the middle and lower lats to get those areas thicker.” Wolf is a stickler for strict form on his rows and won’t normally use any more than 365 pounds. For a man who hovers around 300 pounds most of the year, that’s really not so heavy. “I don’t care about how heavy the weight is,” Dennis states. “I only care about making the muscle grow, and I need to have good contractions and feeling in the lats for that. I could put 500 pounds on the bar and bounce it up and down, but that would be stupid.”

Re-read those last few sentences and let it sink in, because your technique on barbell rows is what will ultimately determine whether they effectively target your lats, or instead hardly stimulate them. I feel obliged to mention that the great Lee Haney felt so strongly about using excellent form on his barbell rows that he typically used just 225 pounds most of the time, and never had more than 275 on the bar throughout his entire Mr. Olympia reign.

One last point I need to make is that you need to be conscious not to stand up too much and turn your rows into a half-assed shrug, cutting the range of motion far short and losing the angle of horizontal pulling needed to properly engage the lats. In other words, you are far better off maintaining roughly a 70-degree angle and using less weight than you are nearly standing upright with twice as much on the bar.

T-Bar Rows

Dennis does some type of free-weight row at every workout, as they are essential for developing greater back thickness. He admits that T-bar rows are done only about every third workout, while barbell rows are more of a mainstay. Wolf also likes T-bar rows, though he considers them more of a partial movement due to the width of 45-pound plates interfering with a full contraction. “In both the barbell and the T-bar row, you always need to be careful not to stand up too much and start making it like the top part of a deadlift,” he advises. To that end, he doesn’t ever go as heavy as he could if he didn’t care about a full range of motion and quality contractions. “I lifted heavy weights with my back for years and didn’t see much improvement,” he tells us. “Once I stopped worrying about using a ton of weight and made the feeling in the muscle the most important thing, my back finally started getting better again.”

Dennis’ observation about using 45-pound plates is important to note, as their size does prevent a full range of motion. You simply can’t pull your elbows back as far because the plates hit your chest or abs, depending on where you are pulling to. One solution is to use 25-pound plates instead. The only problem with that for someone as strong as Wolf is that there isn’t enough room on the typical T-bar row to fit enough plates needed to supply adequate resistance. Most gyms no longer have actual, dedicated T-bar rows on a platform with various grip options. Therefore, most of us have to jerry rig the “corner” T-bar row that Ronnie Coleman made famous, jamming one end of an Olympic bar into a corner and slipping a close-grip cable row attachment under the other end. For every problem, there is always a solution. In this case, if in fact you are so strong that seven or eight 25-pound plates, or “quarters” as many of us refer to them as, is too light; do them at the very end of your back workout when various chins, pulldowns, rows and deadlifts have fatigued you already. Make the most out of the exercise by pausing to fully squeeze your lats to the max at the top of every rep.

Deadlift

Many have argued that the deadlift is the absolute most important exercise for anyone seeking to bulk up their body, since it comes closer than any other of deserving the term “full-body movement.” Think about it. The drive off the ground involves the entire lower body: quads, hams, glutes and even calves. As the bar passes the knees, all the pulling muscles of the upper body come into play: the lats, traps, spinal erectors, rear delts and biceps. Even the forearms get worked holding on to the heavy weight! When it comes to bodybuilding, we are all aware of how key back development has become. “Shows are won from the back,” is a mantra that rings true more often than not. Haney, Yates and Coleman won a total of 22 Mr. Olympia contests partly by dominating their rivals in all the back poses. Dennis didn’t move past the level he had been stuck at for years in the two biggest shows, the Olympia and the Arnold, until his own back took on a thicker look.

“You will probably never get a very thick back unless you do deadlifts, this is the bottom line,” Wolf says. “I don’t think you have to use 800 pounds like Ronnie, but you do have to try and go as heavy as you can for eight to 10 reps.” That’s also the strategy Dorian employed, doing deads at the end of his back workouts when mega-heavy weights weren’t possible anyway.

We often hear that deadlifts are responsible for bulking up a lot of waists and making many thousands of guys look “blocky.” Dennis agrees, to an extent anyway, that they can be a bad choice for some. “I think if you are built for power more so than for having an aesthetic type of physique, you will end up with a thick core,” he says. Dennis has done more than his share of heavy squats and deadlifts over the years, yet his waist has remained small. “I would advise against avoiding deadlifts out of fear they will give you a blocky waist,” he tells us. “They are an excellent exercise for back thickness, and as far as making your midsection grow, that’s either going to happen eventually no matter what, or it isn’t.” He does add that training for pure power and using very low reps is something to be cautious of. “Any time you are trying to develop maximum strength in the squat or deadlift, like a powerlifter would, you are going to force all your core muscles as well as your glutes to work just as hard or harder than your legs or back. That’s OK for a powerlifter because it’s all about squatting or deadlifting as much weight as you can. But I don’t think bodybuilders should do any less than eight reps on those lifts.”

Rack or half-deadlifts are another option to consider, as starting the lift from the knees or just under takes the lower body out of the movement and makes it more of a pure back exercise. Most find that they can overload their backs with far greater resistance in this partial movement, and see excellent improvements in their back thickness as a result.

Barbell Military Press

“People ask me what exercise I think has helped me build my shoulders the most, and this is the one,” Dennis says. “It felt right to me from the start, and my shoulders have always responded to it very well. I know some bodybuilders like dumbbells or machines, but this is my favorite shoulder press.”

Wolf started doing the military press within a month or two of when he started weight training, though he had been using a machine version from the start. “But then I noticed the big guys were always doing the barbell presses,” he remarks. For a time in more recent years, Dennis switched over to the Smith machine, until eventually making a connection between worsening shoulder pain and that device, thanks to a phenomenon to be cautious of called “pattern overload.” That means that since you always move exactly in the same movement pattern on a Smith, you are at risk of overuse type injuries if you use it exclusively over the free-weight version of any exercise.

“This is the bread-and-butter movement for shoulder mass. You can press with a barbell or dumbbell or even a machine, but you have to work hard on overhead presses,” Wolf adds. “They involve the entire shoulder plus the triceps, so you can handle a lot of weight once you get strong.”

Due to its value, he also feels it makes sense to do your presses first on shoulder day. “You really should do it when you are fresh and have all your energy and concentration,” he notes. It’s also beneficial to commence with presses when you are using a barbell or dumbbells because we all tend to lose our coordination and ability to balance and keep weights “in the groove” as we fatigue. Some like Juan Morel and Evan Centopani have professed their preference for standing presses, but Dennis does all his shoulder pressing seated, as it keeps the torso stable and allows him to go heavier in safety. “I don’t use a weight belt for these, so I need to be sure my back is not arching too much. You see some guys leaning back so far, they are doing inclines for the chest when they are supposed to be making their shoulders grow!”

A final bit of advice Dennis offers is to always take the time to warm up thoroughly before even thinking about doing heavy presses. “I always do at least two sets of 20 reps, then usually a third set for about 15 reps, gradually getting closer to my working weight,” he says. “I have never had a shoulder injury, and I don’t want one. I can’t afford to lose any more training time like I did from the hernia— I still have many improvements I need to make.”

Just in case you’re wondering how much Dennis and his cannonball delts have managed to press overhead, he has done good reps with 405 in the past. But since safety and longevity are major concerns these days, he sticks with a working weight of 315 to 365.

Squats

The barbell squat has earned its reputation as the king of all lower-body movements, thanks to results experienced by many millions of men and women over many decades. “Squats are the very best exercise for legs,” Dennis echoes. “They hit your quads, and also your hams and glutes. I just feel better if I do them. If I don’t squat at a leg workout, I feel like something was missing or I slacked. If you look at all the guys with the best legs like Ronnie, Branch, Kai and Jay, they all did a lot of squats.”

After warming up, Dennis begins his quad workout (done on its own day apart from hams and glutes) with squats, as he feels it makes sense to start with the most productive movement when he’s fresh. He does not believe in the conventional practice of warming up with leg extensions. “These only warm up the quads and maybe the knees, but you are using so many other things for squats like your glutes and hams and even the lower back— to me, it just makes more sense to warm up for squats with light sets of squats.”

Another consideration is that many do leg extensions first so squats will target more quads and less glutes and hams. “I need all the glute and hamstring mass I can get,” Wolf quips. “For other guys I guess it’s different.”

Dennis is more than capable of doing eight to 10 reps with 495, and has even done reps with 585, but in recent years he’s been experimenting with higher-rep sets with success. “A lot of times what I will do is use only 315 or 405 at the most, for four work sets of 12 reps,” he says. “But I keep the rest periods between the sets short so the weight feels heavier with each set even though it’s the same. By the last set, I am getting the most ridiculous pump and burn in my quads— but it’s so much safer for my knees and my lower back.”

That switch also made Dennis much more consistent with barbell squats. For several years, he would alternate them with Smith machine squats from workout to workout, mainly as he worried that heavy barbell squatting all the time would eventually lead to another injury (he hurt his knee badly while squatting in 2002), and as a pro bodybuilder who earns all his money based on his physique, that’s something he can’t afford. But now that he’s discovered a way to get the most out of squats without always having to put a ton of weight on his back, Dennis squats at pretty much every leg session. He also goes down just past the point where he breaks parallel and no further, as he doesn’t see any benefit to burying the weight in the hole, or “ass to heels” as some call it. “If you have that type of structure and flexibility, going to rock-bottom can be perfect for you,” he says. “But most taller guys don’t, and for us hitting parallel is the best way. Usually you will know because one way just feels right to you and the other doesn’t.”

As for the Smith machine, Dennis now only uses it for squats if he feels he needs a little extra pump in his quads, and likes to set his feet forward. “That’s something you obviously can’t do with a barbell, and it works just the quads.”

Leg Press

When Dennis started training way back in 1998, he had no idea how to do squats properly, and in fact had yet to realize they were in any way essential to building the best legs possible. So for the first two or three months, the leg press and extensions were all he did for quads. For the many years he wasn’t always squatting, Smith machine squats or the leg press would be his heavy compound movement. Wolf still does them, but now more as a complement to squats rather than a replacement. That’s how most of you seeking to build massive legs should think about them, too.

“It just makes sense to me to do squats first because for those you have to keep the bar balanced and also your lower back need to assist,” he tells us. “But once you have done a few tough sets of squats, the leg press lets you sit down and just push with the thighs without having to keep anything balanced, and your lower back is fully supported.”

Wolf also recommends using different types of leg presses if you have access to them. “Not every gym has a lot of different equipment, I know, but if you can use a vertical leg press you should give it a try. The old-school guys like Arnold and Franco did those all the time, and I like them a lot.”

But regardless of what type of leg press you use, Dennis insists that you will always be better off being more concerned with the feeling in your quads, hams and glutes rather than seeing how many plates you can load up. “Get a full range of motion and feel the muscles working,” he stresses. “Any gym you go to, you will see guys who put on every plate the machine holds and then doing these little half-reps— and nine times out of 10, their legs aren’t very developed at all. Forget about the weight. I can’t even tell you how many plates I use because I just don’t care. I guess it might seem like a lot to some people, but I could use a lot more if I didn’t care about doing the movement correctly and feeling my legs doing the work.” Dennis will often use both the standard angled leg press shown here as well as the vertical leg press in the same workout, as they offer completely different feels.

Lunges

It’s very safe to say that until fairly recently in the history of bodybuilding, lunges were strictly considered a shaping/cutting movement at best, and certainly something you saw mostly women and very few men ever doing in the gym. Everything changed in 2001 with the release of the DVD “Ronnie Coleman - The Unbelievable.” In it, Ronnie wrapped up a leg day while training for the 2000 Mr. Olympia contest out in the baking Texas sun with “parking lot lunges.” On the giant’s back was a 315-pound barbell as he took stride after stride, his quads billowing like enormous Zeppelins, garden-hose size veins straining against the fabric of his tights. This was no dainty “shaping movement” reserved only for girls!

Done with sufficient resistance, lunges will add serious size to the quads, glutes and hams. Wolf himself prefers to rely more on squats and leg presses and adds lunges to his routine only when he is preparing for a contest, but he recognizes their value as a productive compound movement nonetheless. Whether to do them in place or walking is a matter of preference, but Dennis feels walking is the way to go. “It’s a lot easier to get the set done when I can see the point on the gym floor I need to reach,” he notes.

Shrugs

To round out the list of 10 exercises that will pack meat on your frame, we come to shrugs. The trapezius muscle, or traps, gives a look of rugged power when maximally developed, bulging upward from the collarbones like sloping mountain peaks. Weak traps can detract from an otherwise amazing physique, as we have seen in the case of Kai Greene. The traps do receive significant amounts of indirect stimulation from most shoulder and back exercises. But to maximize their development, direct work with shrugs is critical. “You can use dumbbells, a barbell, or even a machine, but always aim for a full range of motion and a good squeeze at the top,” Dennis points out. “There should be an actual pause at the top of each rep, and a full stretch at the bottom.”

Wolf trains his trapezius muscles on shoulder day, and he has two convincing reasons for doing so. Number one, the traps are involved in any type of overhead press or lateral raise anyway. No matter how hard you try to isolate the deltoids, the traps are always helping out. They can’t help it; the whole structure is connected. And secondly, training traps on back day would be an exercise in futility. “After a good back workout, I am wiped out,” confides Dennis. “The traps are a strong muscle group and can handle a lot of weight, but even so, I lack the energy to train them hard after my back workout.” Instead, he hits them after delts, and it all works out just fine.

Wolf likes to rotate doing shrugs with a barbell, dumbbells or a machine. The way he does this is to use one of those for two workouts in a row, then switch to another. “All three ways of shrugging work the traps in slightly different ways. Even with something like a Hammer Strength machine, you are stressing the traps higher up or lower in the muscle by facing away from the machine or toward it. So by using different tools, you are always keeping the traps in a state of struggling to adapt.”

Dennis felt the need to address proper form and a full range of motion one last time, as proper technique is so frequently violated with shrugs. “Come up all the way like you’re trying to touch your traps to your ears, because I see a lot of guys using the biggest dumbbells in the gym or loading all the weight a shrug machine will hold, and then just doing a little twitch rep where they barely move.”

10 to Grow On!

Those are 10 exercises you can use to transform your body into the biggest, freakiest version of your physique possible. As you pack on beef to your chest, back, shoulders and legs, you will take on a look of power that separates you from the average gym rat who only focuses on a couple of body parts. The scale will also set you apart from the rest, as your bodyweight soars to a muscular 200, 225, 250 or more pounds, leaving the realm of the average and stepping into the elite territory of elite bodybuilders like Dennis Wolf.

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