Written by Ron Harris
25 April 2007
Any Regrets on Skipping the Olympia?
With his third-place finish behind Victor Martinez and Pavel Jablonicky at the Night of Champions this past May, Craig Titus qualified for the Mr. Olympia for the third consecutive year. In 2001 and 2002, he was under contract to Weider. Although he wanted to compete regardless, the fact was that if he had opted not to, that contract could have been terminated. Now, Titus is under contract to Pinnacle, Cytodyne Technologies and APT Pro Wrist Wraps. With no implicit threats hanging over his head, Craig actually had a choice this time about the Olympia.

"I knew that maybe I would make the top 10, but the more important issue to me was how much I would be able to improve between the end of May and the end of October," he says. "Realistically, it would be amazing if I could look 10 percent better at the Olympia, given that there would be very little time after the NOC to work on weak points before I had to start dieting again for the O.  And since I came back to the sport in 2000, I have been doing the same thing- hitting the spring shows and then doing a couple of shows in the fall. I decided for the first time since then that I would take a full nine months to have a real off-season, so I could come back next spring with more size, density and conditioning."

Then a funny thing happened. Names started dropping from the 2003 Olympia lineup at an alarming rate. Orville Burke we already knew wasn't coming back this year after having been in a coma for many weeks. Flex Wheeler just had a kidney transplant and was definitely not competing in the show. Victor Martinez and King Kamali both felt they would be better served taking time off to improve so they could come back better next spring, just as Craig is planning to. Shawn Ray, who had this year's special invite, decided to start a family with his hot Latina wife rather than be overshadowed by the hulks that outweigh him by 50-90 pounds (I can't blame him- practice makes perfect!). Pavel Jablonicky declined, most likely because he just gets shafted at the Olympia every time anyway. Art Atwood tore his quad while guest posing in July, and the next month both Markus Rühl and Kevin Levrone tore their triceps in training. Kevin is still holding out hope he will compete, but if he does, it would be hard to conceive of him looking anywhere near as good as he usually does at the O.  

Within the space of just a couple of months, Craig's chances of breaking into the top 10 went from maybe to pretty damn good. "At first I said, okay, here's a chance to jump into the show and make some money," Titus told me.  But now that Craig is married, he has the wisdom of a good wife by his side to help him avoid foolish decisions. "Kelly says, great, now you're defeating the whole purpose of what you said you wanted to do. She knows my work ethic and knows exactly how much I can improve if I do take this time to make it happen. I knew she was right and that doing the Olympia would still not be in my best interests in the long term."

Moving Up the Pack
Craig has no intentions of being a B-level pro anymore. "I'm no longer looking at the guys I beat at the Night of Champions, like King, Chick or Johnnie Jackson," he reveals. "They are behind me now. What I want to do now is get past the next group of guys like Dexter Jackson, Dennis James and Victor Martinez. I know that to do that, I have to improve on what I have shown so far." As we spoke just two weeks away from the Olympia, Craig was feeling very good about the progress he had made. "I am bigger than I have ever been in my life right now," he said, the enthusiasm coming through in his voice. "I'm 275 and can still see abs and veins. I was going to go up to 280, but Pinnacle wants me to shoot some photos for their new ad campaign so I have to get a little leaner for that. But I'm strong as a mofo right now and still have a couple more months to build."

Since a lot of you are meathead geeks like me who want to know just how strong Craig is at present, here are some quick stats:
Dumbbell bench presses - 150 pounds x 15 reps
Squats - 405 x 20 reps
Barbell rows - 405 x 10 reps
          
Having a longer off-season is partially why Titus is making such impressive gains, but there is another reason- literally right in his backyard.

The Home Gym Advantage
Craig and Kelly recently built a 500-square-foot gym, stocked with equipment entirely handpicked by Craig and customized to suit his unique requirements as a fully jacked SOB. What advantages does this offer over training at the Gold's Gym where he used to go? "The main thing is that I am saving time and saving myself a lot of stress," he informed me. "Before this, going to the gym was a three and a half hour ordeal, between getting dressed, driving 40 minutes round-trip, the training and showering." The gym wasn't even that far away, but Las Vegas traffic is getting worse by the day. "Too many fucking people are moving here," he complains. "The city council is considering putting a ban on more building because there isn't enough water out here for all these people. The Hoover Dam is down like 30 feet now."
 
All of us know how frustrating it is to sit in traffic, crawling along and breathing in all those noxious exhaust fumes. That's all behind Craig for good. "Now I get up and do my cardio on an empty stomach, walk right into my kitchen for breakfast, take a nap and let my food digest, and train," he explains. "I train at 9:30 and 6:30 now, instead of doing the whole workout at once." That in itself is yet another bonus, as double splitting is always great if you can swing it. "I have so much more intensity now because the workouts are shorter and I don't have to pace myself as much. I know I will have a good eight hours or so to eat and nap and be ready to blast a second body part at night." The only thing I would think Craig would miss would be the gym atmosphere and maybe a training partner.

"I don't need the atmosphere and I prefer to train by myself anyway," he reveals. "My intensity level is too high for almost everybody I have tried to train with. My style of blood-volume training means you can't rest very long between sets. So if my training partner is doing his set and I am ready to do mine already, I just get agitated." Well, there goes my idea of training with Craig when I'm there in a couple of weeks!

No More Pathetic Pecs
The most biting critiques of Craig's physique have centered on his pecs, or lack thereof. I have to be honest and say that when I was sitting in the press pit at the NOC, his chest was a glaring flaw that detracted from several poses.  Romano and I were dumbfounded as to how full and thick he was in just about every other body part, but that bloody chest looked like it belonged on a much smaller bodybuilder. You can bet 50 amps of Sustanon that Craig has been busting his ass to correct this problem. "I am sick to death of hearing that I have no chest, and I have taken my chest training to another level these past few months because of it," he says. One thing Titus isn't is a quitter, so this is what he came up with to pack some beef on those pecs and shut everyone up.  

Because Craig knows that really impressive pecs are those that are developed equally from top to bottom, he starts with Smith machine incline presses to prioritize the upper chest. After two warm-up sets, he does three work sets of 10-15 reps. That working weight ranges from 365 to 405 pounds, though these days it's usually four wheels for all three sets. "I never go over 405, because then I can't get either the feel or the reps I want," he says. It's important to note that these reps are all done on his own with no generous spotting. "Having someone taking part of the resistance for me wouldn't help my chest grow anyway," he adds. From there he goes to the torque flat bench press machine, a plate-loading model similar to a Hammer Strength flat press. Titus will stack anywhere from four to five 45s a side for four sets of 12-20 reps. You would think balancing heavy dumbbells after two pressing movements would be a bad idea, but Craig isn't deterred. He does three sets of flat dumbbell presses, performing three sets with 130s, 140s and finally 150s. The reps are 10-12, or even up to 15 on a good day.  

With three good pressing exercises done, Craig moves on to some isolation work. At the Titus home gym, he has an Apex Pec flye/rear delt machine that he had special-ordered to hold 325 pounds instead of the standard 150 on the stack. He gets three sets of 15-20 reps, angling his hands so that his thumbs face slightly away from his body instead of straight up to the ceiling. He finds this takes the front delts out of the exercise and better isolates the pecs. Finally, Titus puts the final pump into his pecs with three or four sets on the cable crossover. Again the weight stack is not the factory standard of 150, but goes up to 250 for this strong dude.  

Building a Butt
Having been blessed, or cursed, however you choose to look at it, with a set of bowling ball glutes so large that people often stop me to say, "Damn, that's a big ass," I find it hard to imagine that anyone could possibly have trouble building their glutes up. But apparently some people do, and Craig is one of them. In Bob Cicherillo's now-famous cartoon of Titus on the bulletin board at the Flex magazine offices earlier this year, an arrow pointed to a perfectly flat butt, with the scribble, "no ass."

It seems like something so trivial as to be a joke, but IFBB contests are often very, very close in the judging.  Everyone looks good or they wouldn't even be up on the stage. It comes down to looking for any flaws, no matter how insignificant they may be, to make the harrowing process of sorting these physiques out go a little more smoothly. And in the side poses in both rounds one and three, having well-developed glutes adds to a physique's impact, as they complement the outer sweep of the hamstrings and calves.
 
Craig has a Powertec squat machine at his gym, and he has been doing many sets of very deep squats on it. "It's a true squat because the weight is right there on each side of your shoulders," he says. "The only difference is that it's already balanced for you, so you can focus purely on blasting heavy weights. I love this machine and my glutes have come up a lot recently."

Shoulders So Broad it Takes a Wide-Angle Lens to Film Them
The other criticism constantly leveled at Craig is that his waist is wide and his gut looks huge when he relaxes it. He tried to play along and downsized his midsection dramatically for the 2001 Mr. Olympia contest, with disastrous overall results. "I was so flat and depleted at 230 pounds that I looked like a shadow of my usual self," he laments. "Yeah, my waist was much smaller, but I lost the thickness, the fullness, the muscle density I am known for. After that I said fuck it, I am just gonna build my shoulders up so wide and round that it will make my waist look smaller. Lately I have been destroying my shoulders and back and getting wider and wider by the week."  

For shoulders, he starts with the Apex Smith machine once again as he did for chest. He works up to 315 and gets 12-13 reps at this writing, though he is determined to be handling it for 15-20 reps soon. He follows this up with seated dumbbell presses. "A lot of people hear that and say, hey, why are you doing the same exercise twice in a row?" Craig says. "They may both be overhead pressing movements, but the feel is totally different. I wouldn't waste my time doing both if I felt otherwise."  

Next he does dumbbell side laterals and Craig has come up with a pretty fresh way to use heavier weights. Holding a dumbbell in each hand, he will alternate back and forth for five reps each arm, until both arms have done 15 reps. "I can't do regular laterals with 80s two arms at a time, but this way I sure can," he comments. "And heavier weights build more mass, as long as you do them for enough reps to actually stimulate growth." From here he usually does barbell upright rows, rear laterals on the Apex pec dec/rear delt machine and perhaps even dumbbell front raises. "This workout is working so well that even I am shocked at how my shoulders are looking these days," adds Craig.
 
What about Jay?
Craig's plans for the coming spring include four shows in rapid succession: the Pro Ironman, the Arnold Classic and the pro shows in Melbourne and Rome. I figured it was likely he would run into his good friend and fellow Las Vegas pro Jay Cutler at the Arnold, if not all four events. Does he think he is capable of beating Jay? "Fact is, Jay told me he's sitting out the spring shows, so I won't have to worry about him. Can I beat Cutler at this point in my career? Hell no. I know what I am and am not capable of. Will I ever be able to beat Cutler? Only time will tell. I would have to make a lot more improvements because Jay is an incredible bodybuilder, right up there with Ronnie."

Spring 2004: The Unveiling
For the final six weeks before the Pro Ironman, Craig intends to totally sequester himself inside his home and home gym to focus all his physical and mental energy on coming in bigger and more ripped than ever before. "Even the phones will be turned off," he promises. Since every time I talk to him a call buzzes in on call waiting about every two minutes, that should be pretty interesting. (I can hear the answering machine now: "You have 946 new messages"). The end product of all this should be a 5-foot-8, 260-pound version of Craig Titus that might just propel him to the A-list. We will all find out in just a couple months, but I know Craig. I have no doubt in my mind he will do everything he says. Like Fifty Cent says in the L'il Kim song "Magic Stick," he talks a lot of shit ‘cuz he can back it up.

SIDEBAR
Training Split
                     AM            PM
Day one:        chest            biceps, abs, plus six sets for tri's
Day two:        back            traps, calves
Day three:      OFF
Day four:        shoulders        triceps, abs, plus six sets for bi's
Day five:        quads            hamstrings, calves
Day six:         OFF
Repeat

SIDEBAR
Contest Highlights
1996 NPC USA            Heavyweight and Overall Champion
2001 Ironman Pro            5th place
2001 Arnold Classic        6th place
2001 San Francisco Pro        2nd place
2001 Mr. Olympia             12th place
2002 Night of Champions        5th place
2002 Mr. Olympia            11th place
2002 GNC Show of Strength    7th place
2003 Night of Champions        3rd place