Bodybuilding Advice from the Pros

Dallas McCarver & Dennis Wolf Open Up

Dallas McCarver talks Off-Season

Four Ways to Do It Right!

1. Injury Prevention and Maintenance

Staying injury free is critical to making consistent gains. Warming up enough and using good form is great, but you need to be a little more proactive than that if you take bodybuilding seriously. I see a chiropractor every other week to get adjusted, and I also get a deep-tissue massage once or twice a month to break up adhesions and scar tissue that anybody who trains heavy and hard is going to accumulate. I would go every week if my budget allowed for it. Since it doesn’t, I got myself a RumbleRoller after seeing Antoine using one in an MD video, and I use it every week both before and after my leg workouts. I roll my back, my quads and my iliotibial (IT) bands. It hurts, but those spikes (which a regular foam roller doesn’t have) dig in almost as deep as a massage therapist does. I also stretch every day to maintain good mobility.

2. Detox

No matter whether we’re talking about over-the-counter supplements or otherwise, you really need to give your system a break at regular intervals. It’s called the “off” season for a reason, people! Personally, I like to take four to five weeks off everything, two or three times a year. This also makes everything work more efficiently when you go back on.

3. Have a Nutritional Plan

A lot of guys just eat whatever the hell they want in the off-season, and really have no idea what amount of calories, protein, carbs and fats they are taking in on a daily basis. It sounds fun, but the problem with it is you have no baseline to make adjustments from. If you aren’t making gains, typically your nutrition is lacking something. So how can you increase any variable when you don’t know what they are? Dorian Yates was an inspiration to me in the way he kept training and food logs year-round. I keep track of my meals, and on top of that I don’t eat much junk. I have one or two cheat meals a week even in the off-season. It’s just a lot easier to take in specific amounts of nutrients that way, and making steady progress comes from that. The bottom line is that if you don’t know how much you’re eating, you can’t make adjustments when progress stalls. You’d only be guessing, and good luck with that!

4. Have a Training Plan

It drives me crazy when guys tell me they just “go by instinct” in the gym. Again, as with their nutrition, they’re just winging it with no plan. I like to say, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” I log all my workouts just like I do my meals. This allows you to look over what you’ve done and again, make changes when you aren’t making progress toward your goals. I like to rotate exercises, volume, rep ranges and so on. If I didn’t write these variables down, how would I know exactly what I’ve been doing and for how long, so I could switch things up in specific ways? Even if you have great genetics and work hard, at some point you will be up against other gifted, hard workers. What will give you the advantage over them? Having a plan, being detailed and meticulous, and being dedicated enough to keep track of everything. This leaves no room for error, and guarantees success whether we’re talking off-season or pre-contest.

Dennis Wolf

Heavier Weights Build Size

Do I really need to become very strong to get bigger? I really don’t care how much weight I can bench press or squat, and I think lifting heavy is dangerous. Can I get the same results by using other techniques like slower reps, drop sets and supersets? Also, my legs are already pretty big and I don’t plan on competing, so can I focus more on my upper body?

My friend, you don’t need my permission to do anything. If you want to only train arms, chest or whatever, that’s your decision. If you did want to compete in bodybuilding, you would have to make sure all your muscle groups were in proportion to each other. I actually find it funny when some bodybuilders get upset that there are guys who don’t train their legs or their back, because they only want to look good for the beach or the nightclub. Who cares? If that’s what they want to do, God bless them! At least they are working out and not being a couch potato.

If you plan on growing, you will have to use heavier weights as time goes by. If you have 14-inch arms and you are curling 20-pound dumbbells, for example, I assure you that you will never get your arms up to 17 or 18 inches by curling those same 20-pound dumbbells— I don’t care how slow your reps are or if you superset them with barbell curls and cable curls. Those techniques are really only effective for more experienced lifters who have already become much stronger, and realistically aren’t going to get a whole lot stronger. I mean, if some guy can handle 180-pound dumbbells for incline presses after 20 years of training, that’s pretty impressive. You can’t expect him to keep getting stronger until he can press 250s! As long as you warm up properly, use good form and don’t do very low reps in the range of one to five, you shouldn’t get hurt.

Pressing Behind the Neck: Too Dangerous?

You are known for your amazing shoulders. Some people say that nothing builds mass on the shoulders like behind-the-neck presses, but others say they are too dangerous to the rotator cuff and should be avoided. How do you feel about pressing behind the neck?

I did those for a long time, but I stopped about four years ago. I think once you get to a certain level of strength, pressing behind the neck does become dangerous. It started feeling more and more unnatural for me to have my arms back at that angle, and I found I was also feeling some pain in the shoulders the next day. Since then, I have been doing seated dumbbell presses or presses to the front, and there is no pain or weird feeling anymore. Pressing behind the neck is probably OK if you’re a beginner or intermediate bodybuilder, but after that I don’t think it’s a good idea.

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