Unlike some men such as Ronnie, Jay or Ruhl, Toney Freeman was not gifted with naturally wide clavicles. And he certainly wasn’t one of those guys who people ask if he’s a bodybuilder before he even touches a weight. When he started training nearly 20 years ago at age 21, he weighed just 155 pounds at 6’2” and his arms taped out at a paltry 13 3/4 inches. The fact that he has nearly doubled his bodyweight and become one of the most muscular specimens alive breathes hope into the guys out there who didn’t hit the genetics lottery.
Freeman took a good look at his physique around 1995 and realized that even though he managed to get his back fairly wide, he was in dire need of thickness. That’s when he began adding in more rows and deadlifts. Even more so than the exercises he chose, Toney found what was holding him back for years was his poor form and lack of a mind-muscle connection. “When you have long arms like I do, the natural tendency is for the biceps to take over when you do most back exercises,” he explains. “And I exacerbated the problem by going way too heavy.” He began to focus on squeezing his back and also upped his reps from 6-8 to 8-12. “A lot of times I would be so concerned with using a ton of weight that I justified doing lower reps, but they didn’t keep the muscle under tension long enough. Once I started doing slightly higher reps, I felt the back working more and I knew I was onto something.”
Toney is convinced that the key to his wings getting so ridiculously wide was a very steady diet of wide-grip chin-ups that his lats continue to feast on even today. “I just loved the exercise, and I kept getting stronger at it week by week and month by month,” he tells us. “When I was only weighing around 180 or 190 pounds, I read that
Going too heavy was Toney’s biggest roadblock to arm growth for many years, and it wasn’t until he trained with former top national heavyweight competitor Edgar Fletcher for a few weeks in the mid-‘90s that he gained a new perspective on proper muscle stimulation. “Edgar had enormous arms, and I watched him sit down at the preacher curl using just a 10 and a 5 on each side of the bar for his work sets,” he tells us. “I asked him why he was going so light, because my arms were half the size of his and I could use a 45 on each side. Edgar explained that unless you can flex the biceps while you’re doing the rep, the weight is too heavy and you’re not doing it right. Once I tried going lighter but with that intense and controlled contraction, I realized I had been working my ego much harder than my biceps.” Freeman’s arms began to grow again.
In December of 2005, Toney left his home in
No matter what they claim, I can assure you that most of the guys competing in the range of 250-280 pounds have waists that are probably about 36-38 inches on contest day, and well over 40 in the off-season. Freeman’s is 30-31 inches onstage. At his heaviest, 310 pounds, his waist has never been more than 36 inches. This helps create one of the most dramatic X-frames a human being has ever possessed. What’s his secret to keeping that genetically miniature waist from expanding? “I increased my meals and decreased the portions, for one thing,” he said. “For abs, I don’t use extra weight and focus mainly on the lower abs,” he added. And finally, he gets colonics done several times a year to flush out his colon completely.
“I sucked at benching, mainly because of my long arms,” he says, “and I was pretty horrible at shoulder presses, too.” Rather than further reinforce his structural limitations, Toney focused on lateral raises of all types for his shoulders. For chest, he focused on form and feeling and eventually did build pretty impressive strength to go along with thick pecs.
“The traps are involved in a lot of shoulder exercises, and sometimes it’s easy to let them start taking over when you get tired,” he relates. “It makes sense to me to work them before shoulders so they get pre-fatigued. That way, your delts are forced to work harder with less assistance for the traps.” His favorite training method for traps is to superset
barbell shrugs to the front and back, five times. The reps are in the 8-15 range, and he advises all to use no more weight than what will permit a full range of motion. “If the bar is just twitching and your traps are barely coming up, you need to lighten up and do it right.”
Pressing to the front is a mainstay exercise for Toney’s shoulders, and he will do it seated or standing with a bar, or seated at a Smith machine. “Standing presses are a lot more difficult because you can’t lean back at all, and you have to keep everything tight and balanced.” Just to give you an idea of the difference, he can handle 315 on the Smith machine for sets of 12 reps any old day, while on standing barbell presses he rarely goes heavier than 185 or 205 at most. “With presses in general, I never use a weight I can’t get for at least 8 reps,” he notes. “Anything heavier than that is asking for trouble as far as I am concerned.”
“The single-most important thing you can do if you want great shoulders is to learn how to do a perfect side lateral raise,” Toney boldly proclaims. “If you can learn how to isolate that medial head and not involve any other muscle groups, you are well on your way.” Freeman alternates between two methods of doing his side laterals. When he does them standing, he likes to run down the rack. After warming up with a couple light sets, he starts at the 60s and does 5 reps. Without rest, he repeats 5 reps going down in 5-pound increments (55, 50, 45, etc.) until he gets to the 5s and does as many reps as possible until his arms can’t move. That’s 12 pair of dumbbells in a row and roughly 70-80 reps, and that’s just 1 set! Toney will also do seated dumbbell laterals, but with an 8-second pause at the top of each rep. For these, he only needs 25-30 pounds at most for 10-12 excruciating reps. If you haven’t had a pump in your side delts in awhile, either one of Toney’s methods is bound to do the trick.
Day one: Legs (Quads and some hams)
Day two: Chest and some biceps
Day three: Backs and some triceps
Day four: Shoulders and traps
Day five: Hamstrings and deadlifts
Day six: Arms
*Toney usually trains 13 days in a row on this rotation, then takes one day off before resuming it.
1990 AAU Junior Mr.
1993 NPC Junior Nationals Heavyweight winner
1993 NPC Nationals Sixth, Heavyweights
1994 NPC Nationals Fourth, Heavyweights
1995 NPC Nationals Fourth, Heavyweights
2001 NPC Coastal
2001 NPC Nationals Eighth, Super-Heavyweights
2002 NPC Nationals Super-Heavyweight & Overall Champion
2003 Night of Champions 11th Place
2003 GNC Show of
2004 Night of Champions
2004 GNC Show of
2005
2006 Europa Super Show Winner
2007 Iron Man Pro Winner
2007
2008
2008 Europa Super Show Winner
2008
