By the time you have finished the intermediate level of training, you will have a new body that will make you proud, that will make people look twice when they see you, and that will open doors for you that once were closed. When you reach the advanced levels, you can prepare yourself for a long and healthy life, because you will have begun the bodybuilding lifestyle.
If you go no farther than the advanced level programs described in this chapter, you will be able to maintain your new body without being a slave to the program. You can lay off for a couple of weeks and quickly pick up where you left off. Just remember that the longer you keep up a rigorous training schedule, the longer it will take for you to lose your shape if you should stop — unless you go on some kind of binge. But you won’t want to stop once you see what your body can become and once you feel the vibrant, clean excitement of the bodybuilding lifestyle.
Chapter 4
PROFESSIONAL BODYBUILDING
You should now know a lot about training — what works for you and what doesn’t. For many people who have reached the advanced level of bodybuilding, maintaining their health and fitness will be an end in itself. They will be in the top 25 percent of the world’s population who are in excellent condition and who — barring some unfortunate accident — can look forward to a longer life expectancy than the other 75 percent. But there will be some advanced bodybuilders who want more; they want their particular body condition and training techniques validated through competition. Bodybuilding contests arose because of the need for this validation.
To become a professional bodybuilder, you must now learn the special techniques and tricks that will allow you to maximize your bodybuilding results in the minimum amount of time, to utilize equipment more wisely, and to refine your eating habits so you get maximum results from your training. You must begin to make up your own training programs by recognizing what your body needs most.
In this chapter, I will explain how you can personalize the training programs from the last chapter, so you can train for Competition. I will present techniques and several training programs that I used to win the 1981 Mr. Olympia contest. I will explain what happens at contests and give you strategies that I have used for successful training and successful posing. Most important, I will help you to become confident by explaining what good sportsmanship is all about.
But before I start on these things, I want you to put aside all your worries about competing. You are probably thinking that being a professional bodybuilder is a full-time job and that you will have to be in the gym all day long. This is not true. Let me tell you what is, perhaps, my greatest secret about professional bodybuilding: If all you do is eat, sleep, and train, you will never win.
Throughout my career I have been busy doing other things besides training for, and winning, contests. I studied for, and received, a license in chiropractic and a Ph. D. in Nutrition. I give seminars, write articles and books, and appear in commercials, television shows, and movies. Everything I do, I do because I want to and because these things are fun for me. My mind never dwells on whether I have to do one more set of exercises to improve a muscle or whether I will win a contest.
Letting your mind dwell on any one thing too long is not good for you. It can destroy your image of yourself and your mental attitude. Look at it this way: If you can qualify to be in a contest, you are probably in better condition than 90-95 percent of the people in the world. You are a champion going against other champions. What can give you an edge in such a competition is knowing, too, that you can do other things and that you are more than a bodybuilder. Winning a contest will make you feel great, but it shouldn’t be the only thing in your life that will make you feel great.
Bodybuilding is a great sport. It takes a tremendous discipline to get in shape because that is a human being’s biggest problem, I believe. No one wants to put forth that kind of effort. A champion bicyclist or football player trains hard, but look at what kind of shape they are in. The bicyclist has big legs and very skinny arms — very unhealthy in the upper body because most of his or her circulation is down in the legs. Football players may be more rounded out, physically, but look at the chances for becoming injured. When you look at most sports, you see that even the greatest players retire while in their thirties — many of them just wear themselves out.
After 3 years of dedicated weight training, Franco won his first Mr. Universe title.
I am 40 and am still going strong. I suffered an injured leg five years ago and the doctors told me my career was over. I proved them wrong by winning the 1981 Mr. Olympia. I was 40 years old, but my skin tone looked like 20 — I would have lost if that were not so.
So set aside your worries about professional bodybuilding. It is a great sport that has advantages over all the others: You are your own manager, you can call your own hours, you are among the healthiest group of people in the world, and you can, with hard work and determination, be a champion among champions.
Now I will tell you how to do it!
Training Techniques
Supersets
Supersetting two or more exercises is a technique for training two muscles at the same time instead of one, specifically, two antagonistic (opposite) muscles. Antagonistic muscles or muscle groups are those which work against each other in a coordinated movement. For instance, the biceps is a flexor muscle and the triceps is an extensor, or muscle that extends. The biceps work to flex the elbow, while the triceps work to straighten, or extend, it out again. A reasonable superset routine that exercises both muscles at once will produce striking results.
Properly matching the muscles is the first and most important rule of supersetting. You must select exercises that not only match, but also help balance antagonistic pairs of muscles. Sensible matches include chest-back (and, for added variety, chest-shoulders, and back-shoulders), biceps-triceps, anterior-posterior forearm muscles, anterior-posterior deltoids, quads-hamstrings in your thighs, and frontback calf muscles.
Realistically, the abdomen cannot be supersetted with any other muscle group. Thus, for any training routine you devise on your own, continue your stomach training as before: 4 exercises in rotation, 4 sets of 25 reps each for each exercise.
The second most important aspect of the supersets technique — after you’ve decided on appropriate exercises — is to do the two exercises with as little rest in between as possible. No rest is ideal, but you may well find that your supersets routine requires you to decrease the weight slightly at the beginning; however, after a few workouts you will increase the weight.
Note that in the following recommended routines, the number of sets may not match exactly. For instance, I suggest 6 sets of leg extensions supersetted with only 5 sets of leg curls. I have done so by design, the objective being to balance structure and strength. Most people are stronger in the flexor muscles than in the extensors; ideally, the two muscles should be considerably closer to equal. For a simple demonstration of this inequality, observe how much more power and flexibility you have in turning your hand down — that is, in the direction of the palm — than you do in turning it back toward the wrist. Your entire superset routine should follow the principle of adjusting the number of sets for certain exercises to correct imbalances in structure and strength of antagonistic muscles or muscle groups.
This program will thoroughly exercise every major muscle group twice weekly, and the abdomen and calves four times each.
Split Routines
Split routine training, like supersets, assigns different body parts to different days. A simple example of this would be six workouts a week, three for the upper body and three for the lower, with stomach exercises on at least five of those days. Even better is five workouts a week, staggering them so you get three upper-body and two lower-body workouts in one week and just the reverse in the next. The five-day breakdown is an optimum combination of exercise and rest.
Trisets. Once you reach the advanced level of bodybuilding, you will almost certainly hear about
trisets. This means exercising three different muscles in rotation — for example, the front, back, and top of the shoulders can be worked out in rotation through bench presses, chins, and lateral raises. Except for the time saved in doing trisets, there is little benefit to be gained from doing them, because you must use lighter weights and you end up spreading your blood to too many areas at the same time.
Double Split. Prior to competition I have used the double split routine. To obtain maximum results, I trained the bigger body parts in the morning at full power. In the afternoon, I did a lighter workout of smaller body parts, using less time than in the morning. This type of double split allows recuperation for the body and gets desired results in the shortest time without overtraining. There are advantages and disadvantages to the double split routine. I will explain them so that you understand both.
It takes approximately 48 hours to replenish and store the glycogen that the body uses for energy. In a double split routine the glycogen storage becomes depleted and the natural resistance of the body becomes weakened. This weakened condition is also known as overtraining, and your bodybuilding gains can begin to reverse themselves. Muscle growth stops and the desire to train greatly diminishes. A general fatigue can develop, along with muscle weakness and increased irritability. These conditions can lead to training accidents and injury. Furthermore, your natural resistance becomes lowered and the body becomes more vulnerable to infection.
Of the thousands of people who have consulted me for various training problems — including patients of my chiropractic center — at least half of them had problems because of overtraining.
This is why you must always set realistic goals and stay relaxed. The more anxious you become, the quicker your body goes into reverse. Acknowledge each gain you make and know that you are progressing. Avoid comparing yourself to anyone else. You are an individual with an entirely unique structure and metabolism, and you will respond differently to the same diet and training program than other bodybuilders. Be sure to keep your competitive spirit healthy or you will become negative, and negative energy can only cause problems.
My Mr. Olympia Blitz Routine
Previously, I discussed how I timed my training so that I reached peak form for a contest. I used a routine that combines the double split routine and split routine in a six-day workout. I recommend you use this routine anywhere from 60-90 days before a contest. Keep in mind that you should have balanced out all of your weak muscle groups first and that these numbers are not automatically going to work for you as well as they have worked for me. You will need to adjust them to ensure that you keep a well-proportioned shape to your body.
Training Strategy
To win most bodybuilding contests, you must develop all the muscles in your body to their utmost without losing proportions. You can have mighty arms and shoulders, and thoroughly ripped abdominals, but if your thighs and calves are not proportionately enlarged, then you will lose. In the Mr. Olympia contest, however, perfect proportions are not enough. You need extra things that the other contestants cannot get.
Throughout this and the following sections of this chapter are photos of me posing in many different positions. They were taken around the times of my Mr. Olympia victories, when I was in peak condition. These are to illustrate points about posing as well as to demonstrate perfect proportion and those “extra things” I just mentioned, such as the heart-shaped split in my biceps, the split across my chest, and the split in my calves.
In discussing strategy, I am really telling you about the difference between the advanced bodybuilder and the professional bodybuilder. The professional must look at his competition to see which of his own muscles need special emphasis during training. For example, I didn’t want to beat Chris Dickerson just on overall looks, I wanted to beat him on his best body part. So I trained my calves so they not only looked equally developed inside and out, but with a split in the middle that showed greater definition in my calves than in Chris Dickerson’s calves.
This side chest shot not only shows the judges how well developed Franco’s chest is, but shows his chest with other body parts flexed so that they see it in proportion to the rest of his body.
So you see, competing against other bodybuilders makes you look at them to determine what their strengths and weaknesses are so you can beat them in every body part. You shouldn’t just build size and proportion to your muscles; you must develop definition. It’s not so hard — it’s the best thing about professional bodybuilding. You will begin to see little muscles, striations in muscle groups, or something about your body that is unique. Then, you will work on those special details because you want the judges at a Contest to see what makes you stand out among other bodybuilders. These differences are why you must pay attention to what you are doing during each and every workout, so you will see which exercise brings out the unique muscular details that can make you a winning bodybuilder.
I will tell you more about my strategy for winning the 1981 Mr. Olympia, but first I need to discuss posing. If you are serious about Competitive bodybuilding, you must learn about posing.
Posing
Posing plays an essential role in developing your mental attitude about bodybuilding training. Your body responds to your mind; therefore, you must concentrate not only on training but on how you want your body to look. Form a mental picture of exactly how you want to look and keep going over this in your mind. The most effective time to do this is while your brain is in the alpha state — just before sleep and immediately upon awakening.
Always concentrate on all of your good qualities and do not dwell on your weak points. We all have imperfections — the important thing to remember is not to let the negative aspects of your physique overrule your attitude regarding your positive aspects. Spend your energies working out the weak points rather than on worrying about them.
Posing is the most creative aspect of bodybuilding, and competition provides you a chance to show the world how you have developed your body to its full artistic potential. It is an art that must be developed with practice. Many great bodies have lost in competitive situations because the artist-athlete failed to concentrate on his posing. You must learn to show off your best qualities and minimize your weaker points with correct posture and graceful movements. With practice, you can develop your own style without copying someone else’s routine.
Probably the most difficult aspect of posing is to monitor your progress in the mirror. After each training session, while you are still pumped, stand in front of a mirror and flex each muscle. Closely observe how each one looks. Notice all the details. Try to determine which exercises did the most in bringing out details for each muscle. The better you look to yourself, the quicker your body does what you want it to do.
It is difficult to really see yourself from every angle using a mirror. Another valuable tool for posing is to have a set of photographs taken from every angle. Have them taken at least monthly for comparison with previous sets. I also recommend that you have an experienced bodybuilder look closely at you to provide constructive criticism.
Once you have mastered flexing and relaxing the muscles, begin to put a routine together. At first, you might feel awkward, but as you continue to practice, certain poses will become automatic and then all you have to do is refine and polish the moves. Do your routine at the end of every training session and imagine that you are posing in front of thousands of people and that they react positively as your perfect body moves gracefully from one pose to another.
Women bodybuilders are really the masters of posing. Many of them have backgrounds in dance or gymnastics, and their superb routines are proof that such instruction is very helpful. If you have difficulty in posing, perhaps a dancing course or a choreographer will be necessary in perfecting a routine.
Before I discuss posing at contests, I want to make sure you avoid a big problem that posing creates. The strain of contracting a muscle group to its maximum causes a great many athletes to make a face.
So many athletes do so, in fact, that only five top-flight bodybuilders have ever been able to pose completely without grimacing: Arnold, Sergio Oliva, Frank Zane, Reg Park, and myself. Such grimacing causes blood to go to your face. Not only do you look red-faced, but you attract the negative attention of the judges with your new blush. And most important, that blood is coming out of your pump, where you need it the most.
We all have about 6 liters of blood in our bodies. If, say, half a liter rushes to your face — and that’s a reasonable estimate — you’ve spent close to 10 percent of your total blood supply in order to achieve a negative effect.
It’s not easy to keep your face relaxed during muscle contractions; however, the more you practice, the easier and more automatic it becomes.
Posing at Contests
The standard IFBB (International Federation of Bodybuilders) judging structure consists of five stages or rounds. Seven judges chosen by the IFBB participate and can award up to 20 points to any athlete during each of the first three rounds. The maximum number of points a bodybuilder can get after these three rounds is 300. (The lowest and highest scores are disregarded to ensure fairness of scores, thus five scores of 20 [100] times three rounds equals 300.) In the fourth round, each judge is allowed to award one point to one athlete. Each point counts in this round, so the highest achievable score is 307. The fifth round is really just for show as you will see from the following round-by-round description:
Franco Columbu’s Complete Book of Bodybuilding Page 7
