Bodybuilding Q&A with 4x Mr Olympia Jay Cutler
Bodybuilding Q&A with 4x Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler
To get my lats to flare out as much as possible underneath my armpits, do you think wide-grip chin-ups are the best exercise? I’m also doing barbell rows— would that be a good choice to bring out the lower portion of my lats ?
Wide-grip chin-ups are definitely the best exercise to flare out your upper lats. They’re better than lat pulldowns, because you’re hanging in the air from a bar and not locked under a pad. That makes it much tougher to cheat, so your lats— and to an extent, also your biceps— have to do the work. Barbell rows are an excellent choice for lat thickness. I prefer to do mine with an underhand grip like Dorian made famous. I find I can pull the bar closer into the body with a reverse grip, and I feel it targeting the lower lats more, which is where I need it most. Always keep your back slightly arched and your head up when you do barbell rows, and focus on getting a deep contraction in your lats.
Another exercise I like to do all the time for back is the pullover, either with a dumbbell or a machine. Speaking of Dorian again, you might know from his videos or his articles that the Nautilus pullover machine was a staple in his back routine, and he had one of the best-developed backs our sport has ever seen. The pullover gives you a great stretch at the start of every rep, and it’s also a way to work the back hard without having to worry about your biceps being “weak links” and failing before the bigger, more powerful lats do. The back can be a tough area to develop, because it’s not so easy to feel it working as it is some other muscle groups. You also need to work it from a few different angle to stimulate all the different areas. So in addition to your chins, barbell rows, and pullovers, you also need your low cable rows, dumbbell rows, and T-bar rows. Keep your reps in the 8-12 range and most importantly, make a conscious effort to feel your lats contracting on every rep.
Do you use any intensity techniques in your training? I’ve seen you do drop sets before in your DVDs, but do you use rest-pause, pre-exhaust, supersets or giant sets? Or do you mainly do straight sets with reps around 8-12, high volume with short rest periods? Thanks, and congrats on your fourth win— I knew you would do it!
I don’t do drop sets very often, and I can’t remember the last time I ever did supersets or giant sets. Pre-exhaust is one technique I use all the time. I’ll start chest off with flye movements, or quads with leg extensions very often. I find that helps me get a lot of blood into the area, and opens up the muscle so the compound movements I do afterward will be more effective at reaching as many deep muscle fibers as possible.
Rest-pause is another technique I do quite a bit. For example, on the leg press I might do 10-12 reps, rack the weight and rest for 10 seconds then get another 10-12 reps. I’ll do it on incline dumbbell presses too, but I never let go of the weight. It’s a killer for boosting intensity, hitting the deep fibers, and going to total failure, but don’t overdo it. I don’t usually do more than one or two sets like that in any given workout. You would burn out pretty fast, and get overtrained doing it all the time.
When you do cardio in the morning, do you take anything before the cardio session? BCAAs? Shake? Glutamine? Anything? And at what intensity (heart rate) do you do cardio in the morning? Thanks in advance— you’re the man.
I take BCAAs before my morning cardio, and I like to keep my heart rate right at 140. I feel I get the best fat-burning effect by having an empty stomach, so I wouldn’t have a shake if you’re really trying to get leaner.
I am 17 years old, and was just curious what you looked like at 17? What age did you start training? Also, what was your diet and workout routine at that age?
I didn’t start training until my 18th birthday, when I was 185 pounds and had a good base from years of hard manual labor in my brother’s concrete business. In my first year of training, I put on 50 pounds. My workouts weren’t too different from what I do now. I usually trained five days a week, with a lot of basic free-weight exercises and fairly high volume. I ate six times a day. Breakfast was eggs and oatmeal. The next three meals were chicken and pasta. My fifth meal was steak and a big baked potato, and my last meal was egg whites. It sounds very simple, and it was— but it worked perfectly.
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