Written by Branch Warren
30 October 2006
Introduction

I want to thank Steve Blechman first for promoting me so much over the past year, and second for making me part of the MD team. I really believe it's the best bodybuilding magazine out there today. MD shoots straight and tells it like it is, and that's how I am, too. I'm also eager to be able to connect with the readers and help you out with anything I'm able to, based on what I have learned over the years. This is my column, but it's also yours, so let's get this thing rolling with some of your questions.

 

            I don't think I have ever heard the name Branch before. Where did your parents get that from? Were you ever made fun of as a kid? Just curious. 

            So, this is the very first question I am going to answer in MD? That's fine, I get a lot of inquiries about my name. All I can tell you is that Branch was my grandfather's name. Where his parents got it from I have no idea. I have never come across anyone else in my life named Branch. And yes, I was definitely made fun of as a kid. They would call me Tree, Tree Limb and anything else they could think of to riff on my name. I hated my name when I was a little kid, but as I grew up, I learned to love it because it's unique. Everybody knows a lot of Johns, Jims, Mikes, Steves and Joes, but there is only one Branch.

 

            I have never seen you train, but I know you use some ridiculous weights. I have seen both of Ronnie Coleman's training videos and I have to say, I wonder how the guy doesn't tear something every month with his ballistic form. Is that the style of training you follow, too?

            I train close to that style, but not exactly like it, for safety reasons. Almost four years ago to this day, I tore my biceps while using bad form and ever since then, I've been a lot more careful with how I perform my reps. The main thing is that I never drop the weight and bounce out of the bottom of the rep. That's probably the single most dangerous thing you can ever do in the gym.

Simple physics dictates that as an object falls, it gathers speed and will impact with greater force the faster it falls. A big rock hits the ground a lot harder if you drop it from the top of a skyscraper than if it falls three feet, right? Then, you also have to understand that when you bounce a weight at the bottom of the rep, you are basically taking all the tension off the muscles and transferring it to the connective tissues. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link and particularly in the case of bodybuilders, our tendons are that weak link. Our muscles grow far bigger and stronger over years of heavy training, but our tendons don't grow much at all. They just aren't capable of it, having a very poor blood supply and different types of cells that are mostly collagen and not very elastic, as compared to muscle tissue. So bouncing the weight is the most common factor in muscle tears, which are actually, in most cases, the muscle separating from the tendon that's attached to the bone. 

            So, for example, when I bench press, I will explode the weight up, but then control it down so it's lowered slower than it was raised, and I touch the chest for a split second before starting the next rep. The rep actually stops for that split second as the bar meets my chest, even though to the observer it's hard to see because it's such a brief pause. But getting back to Ronnie, the man is not of this earth. I don't know if he's truly indestructible, but he must be pretty close. His form can be a little loose at times, that's for sure, and I wouldn't recommend that anybody imitate it exactly just for reasons of injury prevention. Take it from me, you never want to experience a muscle tear. For a bodybuilder, it can be the most miserable thing to ever happen to you.   

 

I am just starting to make decent money after being out of college for five years and having a few different jobs that ultimately didn't work out.  Anyway, right now I can spare about 200 bucks a month on supplements, though within a year it should be about double that. What are the absolute most important supplements I should be using right now to add size, and when I have a little more money, what other ones would I want to add into my program?

            I'm not into a lot of the really fancy supplements that are supposed to do all these crazy things for you. I believe in taking the basics, like a multivitamin and mineral, and a quality whey protein product. The one I use is Nitro-Tech by MuscleTech and I actually prefer to drink the RTD cans because they're so convenient. Since I operate a personal training gym, it's not always practical for me to be able to sit down and eat a meal when I have clients back to back. But I can always reach into our gym's refrigerator and grab a cold can to take back on to the workout floor with me and sip between sets. I usually go through two or three of them a day.

If you're having an especially hard time gaining weight, MuscleTech has a new product called Mass-Tech that packs 1,000 calories into each serving.  And believe it or not, it's low in sugar. I can remember similar mega-mass weight gain shakes from the early ‘90s that were mostly sugar and got a lot of guys fat. But I'll tell you what I would definitely make sure to invest in, and that's a lot of steak and chicken. Eat steak and chicken twice a day on top of two or three protein shakes and quality carbs like rice, oatmeal and potatoes, and you will put on muscular bodyweight as long as you're training hard and heavy. If you have money to spare, you can start trying out supplements one at a time to see how they work for you, like creatine monohydrate and nitric oxide boosters.  You can forget about prohormones because by the time you read this they will be classified as illegal drugs in the U.S.A.

I'm 19 years old and have been bodybuilding seriously for almost four years. I put on muscle pretty easily everywhere on my body, but for the past year my arms don't seem to be responding to anything. It seems that no matter what I do they just don't seem to get that big, thick look to them. I've tried working them together (bi's and tri's), separately after a torso muscle, and on their own, but they just don't respond. Currently, my routine is about 10 sets each for both bi's and tri's and I mix up the exercises every week. I want to know if I should start hitting my arms twice a week. I'm a little hesitant only because of overtraining. Right now I train five days a week and hit every body part once except for abs and calves. Do you think that it's okay to do arms twice a week?

If you're a regular MD reader, you should know from a recent shoulder training article about me that I had a real problem getting my deltoids to grow when I was younger. The solution for me was to specialize on them by hitting them twice a week for a while. Within a year, they had caught up with everything else quite nicely. The same should work for your arms. What I would suggest is to train arms twice a week. One of those workouts will be after a torso muscle group. For instance, the first time you train biceps could be after chest, and you could do triceps after shoulders. Then later in the week you would do biceps and triceps on their own day. I wouldn't do more than 12 sets total for bi's or tri's and stick to the basic free weight exercises for the most part. Another good idea would be to use lower reps on one of the workouts and higher reps on the other. Here's a sample so you know what I mean:

Biceps (after chest)

Barbell curls                          4 x 6-8

Preacher curls                      4 x 6-8

Hammer dumbbell curls     4 x 6-8

Triceps (after shoulders)

Lying barbell extensions       4 x 6-8

Close-grip bench presses   4 x 6-8

Overhead cable extensions  4 x 6-8

Arm Workout (on their own day)

Seated incline dumbbell curls   3 x 12-15

Cable pushdowns                         3 x 12-15

Reverse barbell curls                    3 x 12-15

Dips (with weight if needed)        3 x 12-15

            Also, at your age I believe nutrition is 75 percent of the game. You need a lot of calories, period. Don't even worry so much about getting two grams of protein per pound of bodyweight at this stage; just eat a lot of good food all day long. If you're on the really thin side, you may even want to have something like burgers or pizza once every day just to boost the calorie total. Stick with that workout program for at least a couple of months, start eating more quality food, and your arms should finally start growing again. Good luck!

            I've been wanting to compete in a bodybuilding show for a few years now, but I still don't think I'm big enough to win. I guess you could say I'm in a permanent off-season, because I don't do any cardio and I eat a fair amount of fast food and junk on top of my good food. My gym was doing free body fat analysis one day last week and I figured, what the hell, might as well see what it is. I'm 5-9, 245 pounds and my body fat with Bodystat calipers was 29 percent. I know that's a little on the high side. On one hand, I feel like maybe it's time to trim down, but on the other hand, I wanted to weigh around 250 ripped when I do my first show, so I think I should keep trying to bulk up for a while. What would you suggest?

            You need to cut back on the cheeseburgers and ice cream right now, bro!  Twenty-nine percent is very close to being obese and the way you're going, you could cross that line any day. There is a difference between bulking up and just getting fat and I'm sorry to say it sounds to me like you've been doing the latter and not the former. It was good that you got your body fat checked, because at least that let you know how much fat you're really carrying.  You should get in the habit of checking your body fat once or twice a month so you know that the weight you're gaining is actual muscle and not fat. 

But you know what? For right now I want you to forget all about gaining weight. That tunnel-vision mentality has caused you to get fat. You need to drop a good 30 or 40 pounds over the next month and get down to a healthier and more reasonable body fat level, say around 12-13 percent. Clean up your diet right away, going for a high-protein and low-carb approach. This seems to work well for almost everybody. I would start doing cardio five or six times a week, beginning with 10 or 15 minutes each session and working up to 45 minutes to an hour. Right now you are carrying far too much intramuscular body fat. Not only would this be very hard to drop once you did decide to compete, but it's putting you at a higher risk for health problems like diabetes, hypertension and heart disease. 

As for this goal of yours to weigh 245 pounds ripped at your first contest, it may not be very realistic. That's basically the size of a lot of pro bodybuilders and we are all genetically gifted to one extent or another. Not everyone has the capability of carrying that much muscle mass and unfortunately, it leads too many bodybuilders down the path to obesity. I have seen a lot of them walking around at shows all around the country and it's not a pretty sight. If your belly is sticking out past your chest, your butt is wider than your thighs and you have three chins, it's time to realize you are grossly overweight and something needs to be done fast. 

So, what I'd like to see you do is to drop that extra fat that's doing nothing but weighing you down and hiding your muscles. Once you get down to around 210 or so, you should have a much better idea of what your physique actually looks like, as the true shape of the muscles will be easier to see. From there you can start gradually raising your calories in the form of lean proteins, complex carbs and healthy fats. Gain weight gradually, say no more than three pounds a month, and keep doing your body fat tests regularly to know what the actual composition of the new weight is, whether it's muscle or fat. When you do finally decide you're ready to compete, the dieting process will be a lot shorter and less painful and you will have a more realistic expectation of what you're going to look like once you're leaned down to about four to five percent for a contest.

There are few things more disappointing than to diet down and realize that pretty much most of what you thought was muscle was nothing but pure lard. Don't set yourself up for that disappointment and don't burden your body with all that unhealthy fat.

 

            Did you watch the "20/20" interview with Victor Conte of BALCO Labs where he spilled the beans on all the pro athletes he knew were using steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs? Do you think this was a good thing, that it cleared the air a little bit, or is it only going to make the general public more certain that top athletes come out of a bottle?

            I didn't watch the interview, but I caught bits and pieces of it on other news shows and read part of it in the newspaper. Was the interview a good thing? I would have to say no. Athletes in every sport, whether it's track, football, swimming, cycling, what have you, use various drugs to enhance their performance. I don't think the general public even cares, at least not until the media turns it into a big circus and tries to make it seem as if civilization as we know it will come crashing to an end unless we get rid of steroids in sports. 

            I don't condone the use of steroids or other drugs in athletics, but the fact remains that they will always be used. If there are tests, there will be ways to beat those tests, or else new drugs will continue to be developed for which no test yet exists. Going on national television and naming names so careers are ruined and reputations are forever tarnished, or taking away records and gold medals, is pointless. None of this will eliminate the use of drugs by elite athletes to give them an edge over their competition. That's just one type of edge an athlete may employ, along with superior coaching, physical conditioning, training facilities, equipment, etc.

             I have trained over the years alongside several professional football and baseball players. Their admissions jibe with what Conte was saying. About half of all NFL players use steroids and about a third of major league baseball players. Is this a scandal, or is America just being led to believe it's a scandal so these TV news shows and various magazines have a sensational story to run when nothing else is going on? I have a feeling MD readers know the answer to that, even if mainstream America may be more easily duped. Sports like baseball and football are big money, and the players are paid enormous salaries to play at a level at which most human beings never could. They are all naturally gifted with a certain amount of athletic ability and talent to begin with, and many years of diligent practice and good coaching make them truly incredible athletes. Many of them choose to enhance their playing abilities even further. 

Nobody complains about watching great plays and exciting action on ESPN, and the same networks that air these sensational news stories about "steroid cheaters" in professional sports are making billions of dollars in advertising revenue from broadcasting professional sports. These revenues are based on high ratings, which means a whole lot of people tune in to watch athletes do things normal human beings cannot. If that isn't hypocrisy, tell me what is.  

 

Training Journal 

December, 2004

Since MD has been kind enough to give me this space, I'll use it to break some news that until now nobody except me, my family and my training partners knew about. Five weeks before the GNC show, I tore my triceps.

            It happened during a chest workout. I was using 495 on the barbell incline press. That's a lot of weight even for me, but it's nothing I haven't done 100 times before. Prior to this, I had experienced tendinitis in that elbow, which is a very common malady. I don't know too many pro bodybuilders I have spoken with who don't have some degree of elbow pain. The inflammation just comes with the territory of using the elbows for heavy extension and pressing movements day in and day out for years. My way of dealing with it was just to spend a little more time warming up and train through the pain. On this particular day, I felt great. Jay Moore was spotting me and the first three reps went up, no problem. Then, as I was pushing up rep number four, I felt something snap down by the elbow and we both heard it go. The bar crashed right down on my chest and it was all we could both do to rack it. 

            I went to the hospital right away and had an MRI. The doctor told me it was about 80 percent detached, but still hanging on. All three heads of the triceps were still connected to the elbow joint, unlike my biceps tear a few years ago where it came completely off. I had been preparing for the GNC for over eight weeks already, so there was no way I was backing out of it. I just had to keep my chest, shoulder and triceps training very light and focus a lot more on getting quality contractions and a pump. My form was super strict, to say the least, and my rep speed was very slow, because I knew I was skating on thin ice with that tendon. I was able to maintain my size over the next few weeks, and nobody in bodybuilding knew what had happened except Jay and Johnnie Jackson, and they kept their mouths shut. As good as I looked at the GNC, I'm sure I would have looked a little fuller in the upper body if I had been able to keep using my usual heavy weights. 

            I had surgery to re-attach the triceps securely on the day before Thanksgiving. Now I'm in a partial cast and have some movement in that arm, but training is out of the question for a few more weeks. My doctor has given me the go-ahead to resume light training after New Year's because he trusts me to be careful and pay very close attention to what's going on in there, so I don't re-injure it. It really sucks not being able to train because I absolutely love to work out. 

            I am really pumped up to train once I'm healed up and able to hit it hard again. My plan is still to compete next in the New York Grand Prix and I should have plenty of time to get ready for it. I'll be training with Jay and Johnnie, of course. Jay is still on the get-big program. He's a lean 270 and just pulled a 727-pound deadlift in a meet. Johnnie has all his strength back now, too. It's a bummer knowing my buddies are lifting all that crazy weight without me! But it's okay; I'll be back in no time.

            For Christmas, I'll be heading back to my hometown of Seymour, Texas, to be with my family. Seymour is literally so small that if you blink driving through it, you miss it. For New Year's I was planning on going to New York City to see one of my best friends who lives there, but now with the recovery from the surgery, I think I'll stick around the Dallas area.

            My gym, Maximum Fitness, is kicking butt right now and it's only going to get busier in a couple of weeks when all the clients pour in after New Year's Day. I am actually thinking of opening up another Maximum Fitness in New York, but more about that in a future column.

            That's all the news for now. Next time we talk I should be training again. 

 

Got a question for Branch? E-mail it to him through http://www.musculardevelopment.com/