Thoughts for you Body Builders or Gym Rats

Most guys in the age range of 18-25 focus on what when they go to the gym?  You guessed it size and trying to get as strong as possible.  I recently received a few emails and questions about body building splits and push and pull workouts.  I recently got a client who was a Cross-Fit master and killed most of their circuits on  a weekly schedule.  The problem this athlete was having was with back pain and shoulder restriction because of the great demand on the Olympic Lifts (love them) and crazy workouts (love them also).  The problem this athlete also enduring was the inability to gain size and trying to complete the workouts while in pain.  First, Cross-Fit workouts are great but not for everyone and aren't really specific to the demands of sport.  I wanted to give you some advice on what has worked for me and also some other performance coaches.  Here are a few questions to think about.  Remember I'm a performance coach not a body builder.

1.  Splits are best?  Chest on Mondays and Back on Tuesdays and Legs on Wed. correct?

2.  I can isolate my push days and give them 1 day of rest and this will help me grow?

3.  Your body needs more weight to grow and get stronger?

I don't think I know all the answers but like I said I wanted to shed some light on a few ideas to help you with your basic program design.  Your body is connected and when does it grow?  At rest so if you could look inside your body you would see the body is connected kinda like a big tangled up string so you can't really isolate muscles doing basic lifts.  If you could hit your chest and back 2 or 3 X week wouldn't it have more time to grow?  Try push and pull workouts and then legs on a different daysto allow you to work your muscles more but also give them more time to grow while resting and allowing the fibers to grow after the break down in the workouts.  Let us look at the basic bent over DB row.  Say you don't use a bench or even if you do your legs are stabilizing you and your back and core are keeping your from going into flexion. So you want to isolate your lats or back muscles if you really doing a lot more then just a pull exercise.  Your body is connected and you can hit a lot more muscles and not really have them as prime movers.  I'm not saying stop doing Chest Mondays but often the simple body building splits aren't enough and I think they can get kinda boring.  You spend 45 minutes doing all  chest why not try back exercises as your active rest then that gives you a day or more to let them rest and grow.  You hit legs and work on your flexibility the next day and your ready to go for another Wed. of push and pull workouts.  If you not a big leg guy, most aren't in the 18-25 age do some single leg rows or standing cable presses to get your legs some work while focusing on those beach muscles.  Here are a few tips to help you strength body builder guys.

1.  Use 1 or 2 machine exercises to focus more on your beach muscles but then use DB or cable systems in a standing position to focus more on ground contact and posture.
2.  Add your flexibility for your hips and thoracic region between your upper body sets as an active rest.
3.  Don't limit yourself with the add more weight try you body weight and try higher reps to bring your workouts to another level. 
4.  Try negatives and isometric holds with your work weight and get more fibers to work instead of adding more weight to the barbell squat.  Try single leg squats to save your back and get a killer leg workout.

I know the typical guy gets to the point where they aren't gaining size and strength and wonder why?  Try a few of these and see what happens I'm sure you will like the results.  Thanks for reading guys.

Coach B Meyer
www.bmeyertraining.com

                                                Fabio or Josh?