Written by Team MD
06 February 2015

15LISTEN-TO-BRANCH-WARREN

Listen to Branch

Branch Warren Answers Your Questions

 

Invigorated by his sixth place finish at last year’s Olympia, Branch Warren enters the Arnold Classic on March 7th committed to emulating his victories there in 2011 and 2012. Here he addresses questions aimed his way.

1) Love the Safety Squat Bar

     I’ve seen you use the safety squat bar in your videos, what benefits do you see in using it?   

I love this bar so much that I do almost all my squatting with it. The safety squat bar is a bar with a yoke type of padded harness welded into it that goes over your upper back and chest. That changes the weight distribution so there’s much less pressure bearing down on your lower back, which is perfect for anyone who either has a lower back injury, or who has had one in the past and isn’t interested in re-injuring the area. Another thing that redistribution does is make the quads work much harder by taking the glutes and hams out of the movement to a large extent.

     You also have a couple of options with the safety squat bar. Some of them have bars welded into them that come out in front of you as handles you can grip. For anyone with shoulder problems who has a tough time reaching back to hold on to the bar for squats, this is a real relief. Another thing you can do thanks to the harness is grip the uprights of the power rack for greater stability, maybe even a forced rep or two. All in all, it’s a great little piece of equipment. It’s definitely worth investing in. And for those of you who have one at your gym but have never tried it, you have no idea what you’re missing.

LISTEN-TO-BRANCH-WARREN-1

2) Meals and Workout Timing

What do you think is the optimal amount of time to elapse between eating your pre-workout meal and starting your workout? It seems kind of tricky, because if you wait too long then you’ll be hungry and start to get lightheaded during your workout and if you don’t wait long enough, you could have a hard time training and even feel nauseated. How do you find that balance?

When I was younger, I used to be able to start training within 20-30 minutes of eating. Now, I find about an hour is best. That’s how long it takes me to get to Metroflex from my house, so it works out perfectly. I eat, get my gym bag, and take off. Another thing related to this is that I prefer to have a few meals in my system before I train, but that doesn’t always make sense due to other factors. In August here in Texas, for example, it’s often 100 degrees by the time I get out of the gym at noon. If I had a couple more meals and waited to train until late in the afternoon, it would be somewhere between 105-107 degrees out. Since Metroflex doesn’t have air conditioning, it’s not worth having those meals if it will be that much hotter in the gym, especially on leg day.

LISTEN-TO-BRANCH-WARREN-2

3) Can Deadlifts and Rows Build a Champion Back?

     Do you believe it’s possible to build a champion back from doing only deadlifts and different types of rows such as barbell, dumbbell and cable?

     Yes I do, even though I do plenty of pulldown movements on top of those in my own back workouts. I should qualify my statement, though. If you have killer genetics for back, deads and rows will be all you need. Look at my training partner and good friend Johnnie Jackson. The dude trains like a madman, but I guarantee you that if he had never done anything but deadlifts, barbell rows and dumbbell rows, he would still have one of the very best backs in the world today without one set of chins or lat pulldowns. If you fit into the other 99.999999 percent of human beings, then you are going to need those too.

LISTEN-TO-BRANCH-WARREN-3

4) Pineapple and Yogurt Helps Digestion

     I saw your post on Facebook that eating pineapple and yogurt is good to help digestion, especially with a high-protein diet. Should I have one of those with every meal?

     Not with every meal, no. In the off-season and in the early stages of my prep, I have both pineapple and yogurt with my breakfast, then again with one of my meals in the late afternoon. I think it makes a real difference in the absorption and utilization of your food, which is something a lot of bodybuilders don’t think about. It’s not enough just to eat the right foods, but your body has to assimilate them too. I don’t do it in the later stages of my contest prep because I’m really refining my diet at that time.

LISTEN-TO-BRANCH-WARREN-4

5) Arm Training: How Much Is Too Much?

     I was watching a video on MD with Victor, Juan Morel and Jonathan De La Rosa training arms, and they must have done five exercises each for biceps and triceps. I want to say the total amount of sets was around 30. That strikes me as overkill. About how many exercises and sets do you feel is about right on arm day?

   It’s really up to the individual. You can certainly go very heavy and get the job done with a lot less sets and overall volume. That’s fine unless your tendons don’t agree with it. It got to the point for me where my elbows couldn’t take super heavy close-grip bench presses and skull-crushers anymore, so I started going a little lighter and using more volume. There was also a period of a few years when I trained my arms twice a week to bring them up. One workout was pretty standard volume with heavy weights, while the other was higher volume with higher reps and supersets, and aiming more for a pump. That worked like a charm for me. I agree that 30 sets or more for arms is probably too much for most guys, but then again, there are also guys out there who would grow better doing that. Until you’ve tried both styles, how would you know what worked best for you?

LISTEN-TO-BRANCH-WARREN-5

6) Bodybuilder Dad

I saw pictures on Facebook where you were assembling a big swing set and slide for your daughter. This was only seven weeks out from the Mr. Olympia. I would have thought you need to avoid any physical activity outside the gym, and certainly you could have hired someone to put that together for you. Why would you do that, or do anything around the house or your yard for that matter except eat and rest?

Why? Because I’m not a lazy bum! That’s my little girl. I can’t put her play set together for her? I just don’t like sitting around and doing nothing; it feels wrong. Some guys I know in the sport don’t do anything except train, eat, sleep and watch SportsCenter. I have horses to take care of, a farm to check up on, and my shipping and logistics company to run with my wife Trish. I’ve worked my whole life. As far as not doing anything physical, it’s not like I’m working construction. I might do little projects around the house or the farm here and there, but that’s no big deal.

 

DISCUSS THIS ARTICLE ON THE MD FORUM

SEE MORE BRANCH ARTICLES IN HIS BLOG