Advanced Bodybuilding 2012 part 1, by Fred Koch,P-SC

The nice thing about having a blog to write on and not always writing articles for the masses is I know who my audience is and they know me. So I can put the little things in the article that , well are the real me. When Felipe, from Portuagal and I finshed the last article on the latest scam in BBI gt so much mail I was actually shocked. Since I live in Norway and they are about 5 years behind the rest of the fitness and BB world I knew what it would be. The baiscs of the article was this 1 bodypart a week bullshit is the latest scam going around becuse in short BB are lazy, me included, and love to hear there is a faster easier way. All the mail was how full of shit I was and all the big BB train that way, bla, bla bla, I just had to laugh because none of these num-nuts happened to mention the BB they talked about do so many drugs that anything they do works. Of course no one in Norway has any idea of the history of BB so the fun part is I am getting to give some of the old material a new shot. 

Here is the article on the web på norsk  

http://www.iform.no/pub/art.php?id=2310

And also the following article how it came out in the web article:

http://www.iform.no/pub/art.php?id=2423

I will try to post some other articles I ad done here that were not on the blog also as you see some stuff from Carlo, who as I said before its the best sports fitness guy I know. Plus an ameteur powerlifter.

Plus my next article will be on the latest books with greatart work that people are falling for and how wrong many of the exercises are. BUT, the artwork is nothing near my pal Leon Bachs work you use to see in Ironman. I think he is off looking for king tuts brothers tumb now, since he changed careers for the 5th time.

NOTE:  am having some issues with my images due to the weak signal. check the Norwegian article or wait a day and I will fix it.

 Advanced Bodybuilding 2012 part 1, by Fred Koch,P-SCE

Workout #1

Chest, Shoulders, Triceps

Workout # 2

Back,Biceps

Workout # 3

Legs, Abs

Many of you may ask why I start with the advanced or Intermediate BB . The reason I picked that to start was that most of you have been training for some time and are wondering round like lost ghosts in the the night not knowing what exercises to pick or when to do them. You end up picking whatever routine is on the internet page you happen to be on that week. Which usually turns out to be from some famous steroid king on the interenet. I cannot believe all the ridiculous programs that people come up with that have no basis except….it works for me. What I want to do in this series is offer you some basic logic for training that I guarantee will give you results.

One thing before I start on this “works for me program” story. Keep in mind that everyone has good body parts. No matter how they work them they will grow. This is true of many champions. On this I say, if they did it the scientific way, maybe they would be even bigger or better.  

Then we have my favorite”Mr Roid”, the guy using steroids in large amounts forgets to tell you 2 things.

#1 he or she is taking steroids. This is becoming even bigger with the fitness models, which is for another article, than many of the guys, but let’s stick with the guys. So first they are not taking anything. BULLSHIT. It is so obvious who is taking steroids because they are so out of normal with the rest of humans, cannot and I mean “CAN NOT” be believed when it comes to his training results. The amount taken and the types are known to have so large an effect on the results than it is an easy call.

The #2 things this Mr big will not mention is that for 10 years when he first started training years ago the quality of steroids were terrible. He had to train 6 xs a week to keep up with the competition even though he was juicing. Add to this what is called “muscle maturity” grows over years. What this means is the more years a muscle is trained not only does it get a more mature look it also takes less training to get the same results. Add to this the latest in steroids and you get a variety of training programs that are out there. None of which really have a logic to them.

 So getting away from that I want to talk training.

 What I have done is looked over 30 years of training and being around training is to pick the program that seems to pop up for both scientific and practical reasons That is why I decided to give you the best start on the winter I felt was possible. This week I will take the first part of this workout and break it down so you can better understand why this format of both days (2xs a week, and body parts are choose.)

 

Oh well, why not try something that works for everyone and not the quick fix you have been reading about for the last 2 years.

I mentioned it in the last article, all the scientific reasons why this program makes all the sense in the world.  http://www.iform.no/pub/art.php?id=2310

Day# 1 and #4

Chest shoulders and triceps, pushing movements.

Day #2 and #5

Legs, and core, (abdominals and Lower back)

Day# 3 and #6

Back and Biceps, pulling muscles

 Why this break down?

Chest shoulders and triceps, pushing movements are done in the beginning of the week because it is the day after the weekend and that is the fun workout. Since it is the day after the weekend it may not be fun for you to start the week off with legs.  Next day we do legs and core. The week has started and your body is ready for some real work. Legs are the king of size and strength and core is, in case you forgot 1/3 of the body is core. It is good to put these together. Nice to super-set a leg exercises with a core exercise.

Finally we have back and biceps. For the same reason we do CST we do back and biceps, whenever you do a back exercises you are doing a bicep exercise so why not work them together and let them recover. This is usually a shorter workout that the 2 days also.

 When you go to start this program the first question that you need to ask yourself , do I want to be bigger or just “feel” strong every time I workout? My answer for most would be to get bigger and stronger over a period of time. In that case we have to look at the last article and see the main object is to tire out the muscle enough to work it, allow it to recover and then work it again, constantly adapting the muscle to stress and then letting that recover work it’s magic.

Once you get past that part now it is time to work on the muscles. If we look at the first days muscles in question chest, shoulders and triceps we see that they all involved some type of pushing motion. What do I mean by that? Any chest exercise also works some shoulders, they are pushing, some triceps, they are pushing and extending, about the same thing.

This is the most important thing to remember. Your goal is to tire out the muscle and let it recover. NOTE, to feel strong in every exercise you do every workout. That is the goal that all these 1x a week body part workouts are after and they are wrong for maximum results.

When I use these groups of exercises for example many of the chest exercises also work shoulders, and some triceps. When you do say for example arms on a day by themselves you may have to do 5 or 6 sets just to get your arms to the exhaustion level that they are on the chest, shoulder, triceps combo day. Now that is a waste of time.

 If you are one of the many Norwegians that have good arms and shoulders but there is not the fullness to your chest that you wish, then now is the time to pay attention. I’ll even give you the answer first, you have long arms, your arms and shoulders do all the work in pressing movements and thus giving you lots of arm work, but never really penetrating through to the chest to fully develop it. You are exhausting your arms and shoulders and not your chest.

 So we start with chest, let’s do bench press first. That is the king of chest. A compound exercise, meaning more than one muscle. To move the bar up we have to contract the chest, half way. The front  of the shoulders pulls the bar back as it moves up and the triceps lock the bar out while helping with the rest of the movement ,but not a lot due to momentum and help from shoulders. If you look at his exercise you can plainly see that there is only ½ motion of chest, a small part of shoulders from the momentum and a lot of work from the triceps as they are the smallest muscle in the group and second is those little front deltoids. Well, compared to the chest they are. By doing the bench press first we have gotten the macho movement out of the way, which is really the fun one of the main parts of training, being strong and bench is cool.  Let’s take a look at what we did, well, mostly tired out the triceps.

Just for a test workout to see if this is true for you, do pec dec, then super set it with bench presses, do 3 sets of this. NOW, what muscle is tired.  Your chest. So that should prove to you the chest does not get a lot of chest work in bench pressing, but it is fun and is always first.

BENCH PRESS

Now we can go in one of two directions, 45 degree inclines is the old way, it is suppose to work your upper pecs. , but wait, didn’t we just show that these type of multi-joint movements really work more arms. If you are one of the guys that goes this way then I bet you have good arms and shoulders and a small little chest. Too much arm work, no real chest. Here is something else for you to think about. When was the last time you felt 45 degree incline benches in your chest? Why? 45 is too high of an incline. , it works mostly shoulders. I mean it is 15 degrees away from the shoulder press and 45 from the chest, hello??????? To get anything out of this exercise you have to do them at 15-20 degrees. That’s another secret for later.

The modern day bodybuilders method is to do upper incline cable pulls next. This movement focuses just on your upper pectorial muscle. A muscle works in a straight line. If you look at the upper fibers of the chest you can see the line from the clavical to the arm. See kendell and kendell and you you will see the picture. Now, how to line this up. The elbow has to go to the upper part of the chest. Yes. The thing that messes up everyone s the chest gets in the way half way up. That is good. It means you have fully contracted the upper pec fibers.  The mistakes that are made are going around this block or going sraight up in the air, which really makes it a type of reverse shoulder press. If you look at the video link.

Upper Cable Crossover:

 Keep in mind here I am sculpting the human body through the muscles. Next we look at the chest fibers and see how the lower fibers extend down from the arm to the lower section of the pecs. Remember the muscles are wanting to work in a straight line for the best results. To set the lower fibers up in a straight line you need to go down on your knees and have the arm overhead. You are doing the opposite of the upper. The elbow movement in this exercises is important, the elbow follows the line of pull down to full contraction of the of the lower fibers. Again the bulk of the chest will get in the way and you will want to swing round it. 

Lower pec Cables

 What you have to learned during all this is to see how your muscle work and work with them to get results.

So far we have hit the main macho movement, the upper pec fibers, the lower pec fiber and now we go for the center pec fibers. Here we come to another possible error in the making. We can us lying cable flys or pec dec if you want. Start with lying pec cable flyes. The object is to contract the center fibers of the chest. NOT to lay on the bench and touch your hands together. This is the big mistake you will always see. Lay on the bench, stretch the cables out and pull the hands to the top and stop. Well guess what. The center fibers are not done contracting , try crossing over your arms and then feel the chest fibers really contract. Think I’m wrong, check this picture in TI book.

(Drawing by Hamiliton)

IMPROPER CABLE CROSS 

This is the improper way to do the movement. Notice how the arms are going under the chest not in a stating line across it to the lower pecs. See video

Now for the last old, but in todays world secret exercise is the good old DB pull over. Take a look at the size of your pectorial minor on muscle chart. It’s almost as big as your bicep. For years BB did this movement to stretch the rib cage, well I don’t know about that, but let me tell you if you do this correctly you will finish your chest off by hitting all the right muscles in the right directions. The key to the pullover is that your elbows stay inside the line of your sholders. If you let your elbows float outside the line of your shoulders you will be doing lats. Again be careful of this..

Pec Minor

I was going to give you the shoulders and triceps today to finish the workout, but my editor is looking over my shoulder telling me that there is enough new stuff here for the reader to absorb for one article.

What I will do is give you the exercise I will cover next time in shoulders and triceps. The exercises are done for a specific reason to hit specific heads of the muscle. I will cover all this in the next article.

Arnold press

Side laterials

rear laterals

Shrugs

Lying tricep extensions

Tricep pushdowns

Lockouts

Fred Koch (P-SCE), er styrketrener og bor i Kristiansand. Jeg er direktør for Tudor Bompa Institute (TBI) på verdensbasis. TBI er et internasjonalt sport- og fitness sertifiseringsprogram for personlige trenere og styrketrenere. www.fredkoch.com

 E-mai Fred at ,fred@fredkoch.com

Fred Koch, P-SCE is the International Director for Tudor Bompa Institute, TBI, one of the world’s top certifications systems. For more information you can e-mail Fred, fredredkoch.com. or see his blog at www.fredkoch.com