DefMetalLifter
MuscleChemistry Registered Member
Seeing your training blog on the MD site really inspired me. Your training intensity is incredible! How do you know when you’re ready to enter your first show? I train alone, without help from a trainer or training partners.
Unless you were around a trainer or training partners who had some experience with competing or at least watching contests, they wouldn’t have any better idea than you as far as whether you’re ready to compete. My best advice is to go check out a local contest or two, and pay special attention to whatever division you will be competing in. That could be teenage (you didn’t note your age), novice, which I highly recommend for your first time, or one of the weight divisions in the open men’s. Be brutally honest with yourself and ask if your physique would belong up there with them, or if instead you would be way out of your league. You may in fact be ready to compete now, or it may be another year or two before you’ve built enough mass to have the look of a competitive bodybuilder.
The guys who win are generally pretty well-proportioned, meaning even development in all the major muscle groups. Many times I have seen guys in their first show with a good chest and arms, but no legs and no back. You really need to have a fairly complete physique with no glaring weak points if you hope to do well.
You should also take note of how lean the top competitors are. One thing that’s embarrassing for everybody is when someone shows up to compete carrying so much body fat that you can’t even see their abs. I always wonder if they even own a mirror, or if they only look at themselves in the best possible lighting.
There’s a lot more to competing than I have the space to get into here, but you should definitely go to a couple contests before you compete, so you’ll know exactly what you’re getting into and what you’ll be up against. Good luck to you, dude!
As my favorite bodybuilder and the main reason I do this, I was wondering if you could help me out with a few ongoing nutritional concerns that I have.
1) After a workout, I take two scoops of protein and one scoop of waxy maize, then 1 hour later I eat 8 ounces of both chicken and pasta. Does the pasta need to be ‘regular’ or should it be whole wheat? Regular is higher glycemic, so I would think that would be the way to go.
2) How important is pre-workout protein? A lot of the articles I read say to have a scoop of whey protein before working out. But when I look at the diets of the top pros, none of them seems to do this.
OK, here goes:
1) I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the glycemic index. I usually have steak and a potato as my post-workout meal. When I do have pasta, I couldn’t even tell you whether it’s regular or whole wheat. I guess if it’s off-season and you’re just trying to gain mass, white pasta would be fine. Whole wheat would probably digest a bit slower, so that would be better for dieting. But I would discourage you from getting too technical and overthinking every little thing. This shit ain’t rocket science.
2) I don’t do this, and here’s why: I generally train around noon. I wake up pretty early, say around six, so by the time I train I’ve already put away three solid meals. All those meals contain protein, like steak or chicken. So my feeling is that there are more than enough amino acids circulating in my bloodstream so that I don’t need to worry about ‘going catabolic’ during my workout. I have shakes (Cell-Tech and Nitro-Tech) after my workouts. I think your body is more receptive to absorbing protein in liquid form at this time. My best advice would be to eat a good meal with a quality protein source around 60-90 minutes before your workout, and save the whey protein for afterwards.
You looked sick at the Arnold— your best package yet! Has your training volume increased, decreased or pretty much stayed the same through the years?
For some body parts, the volume has increased. Really, I guess my back would be the one area that I do a lot more exercises and sets for, and it’s made a big difference in being able to achieve the detail in my back that I need. I used to do a lot more for arms, but eventually I figured out that they actually responded when I cut back on the volume. So as you can see, it’s not so simple. For any of us, we need to experiment and figure out how each muscle group reacts to doing more or less. Otherwise you could very well be doing too much, or not enough.
I’m getting ready for a couple of shows next month, then the Teen Nationals in July. After you won the Teen Nationals in 1993, how long did you take off until you competed again? Also, how heavy did you get? I’m going to compete around 165 in July, and was wondering how long I should take off until I compete again. Should I worry about getting too fat during that time?
Man, you’re making me go way down memory lane now. You may not know that the year before I won the NPC Teen Nationals, I won the AAU Teenage Mr. America. I actually competed once more as a teenager and won the open NPC Texas at age 19. Back then my off-season weight was about 210-215. I took off five years after that to go to college and get my career as a trainer started, and in that time I brought my off-season weight up to 235.
When I was 24, I won a show called the Southwest USA at 212 pounds, then kept dieting for the USAs. I got down to 202, which was too small for me, but still took third place behind Tevita Aholelei and Troy Alves. The year after that I entered my second pro qualifier, the 2001 NPC Nationals, and got my pro card by winning the heavyweights. My buddy Johnnie Jackson won the light-heavies and the Overall.
I don’t suggest ever letting yourself get fat. You can make very decent gains while maintaining a reasonable condition where your abs are still visible, if not crystal-clear. I can’t tell you how long to wait until you compete again. That depends both on the progress you make with your physique, as well as what other things in your life need to be taken care of.
An Easy Prep— Really!
A lot of people were asking me about my prep for this show. Because I was so ripped and hard, most assumed it had been a miserable time and that I had suffered terribly to achieve that condition. Ironically, that was not the case.
After last year’s Mr. Olympia, I started talking to IFBB pro George Farah about doing my prep for the Arnold. It’s hard for me to really work with anyone because I feel I know my own body better than any coach could, but the more we talked the more I liked his approach. It actually reminded me a lot of how I used to get ready for contests back in the old days. There was no ‘keto’ crap, I assure you. My low-carb days were around 200 grams, and my higher carb days would be about 500-600 grams. In the past I have done as much as 2 hours of cardio a day. This time, I did no more than 20-30 minutes.
I now understand that for years, I overdid shit because I thought the way to win was to work that much harder than everybody else was willing to work. It’s really about working smarter, not harder. I can say with total confidence that you will never see me compete ‘off’ again. I wrote down everything I did on this diet. Even though your body changes and you don’t respond exactly the same every time, I still believe I have found my winning prep formula at last.
Unless you were around a trainer or training partners who had some experience with competing or at least watching contests, they wouldn’t have any better idea than you as far as whether you’re ready to compete. My best advice is to go check out a local contest or two, and pay special attention to whatever division you will be competing in. That could be teenage (you didn’t note your age), novice, which I highly recommend for your first time, or one of the weight divisions in the open men’s. Be brutally honest with yourself and ask if your physique would belong up there with them, or if instead you would be way out of your league. You may in fact be ready to compete now, or it may be another year or two before you’ve built enough mass to have the look of a competitive bodybuilder.
The guys who win are generally pretty well-proportioned, meaning even development in all the major muscle groups. Many times I have seen guys in their first show with a good chest and arms, but no legs and no back. You really need to have a fairly complete physique with no glaring weak points if you hope to do well.
You should also take note of how lean the top competitors are. One thing that’s embarrassing for everybody is when someone shows up to compete carrying so much body fat that you can’t even see their abs. I always wonder if they even own a mirror, or if they only look at themselves in the best possible lighting.
There’s a lot more to competing than I have the space to get into here, but you should definitely go to a couple contests before you compete, so you’ll know exactly what you’re getting into and what you’ll be up against. Good luck to you, dude!
As my favorite bodybuilder and the main reason I do this, I was wondering if you could help me out with a few ongoing nutritional concerns that I have.
1) After a workout, I take two scoops of protein and one scoop of waxy maize, then 1 hour later I eat 8 ounces of both chicken and pasta. Does the pasta need to be ‘regular’ or should it be whole wheat? Regular is higher glycemic, so I would think that would be the way to go.
2) How important is pre-workout protein? A lot of the articles I read say to have a scoop of whey protein before working out. But when I look at the diets of the top pros, none of them seems to do this.
OK, here goes:
1) I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the glycemic index. I usually have steak and a potato as my post-workout meal. When I do have pasta, I couldn’t even tell you whether it’s regular or whole wheat. I guess if it’s off-season and you’re just trying to gain mass, white pasta would be fine. Whole wheat would probably digest a bit slower, so that would be better for dieting. But I would discourage you from getting too technical and overthinking every little thing. This shit ain’t rocket science.
2) I don’t do this, and here’s why: I generally train around noon. I wake up pretty early, say around six, so by the time I train I’ve already put away three solid meals. All those meals contain protein, like steak or chicken. So my feeling is that there are more than enough amino acids circulating in my bloodstream so that I don’t need to worry about ‘going catabolic’ during my workout. I have shakes (Cell-Tech and Nitro-Tech) after my workouts. I think your body is more receptive to absorbing protein in liquid form at this time. My best advice would be to eat a good meal with a quality protein source around 60-90 minutes before your workout, and save the whey protein for afterwards.
You looked sick at the Arnold— your best package yet! Has your training volume increased, decreased or pretty much stayed the same through the years?
For some body parts, the volume has increased. Really, I guess my back would be the one area that I do a lot more exercises and sets for, and it’s made a big difference in being able to achieve the detail in my back that I need. I used to do a lot more for arms, but eventually I figured out that they actually responded when I cut back on the volume. So as you can see, it’s not so simple. For any of us, we need to experiment and figure out how each muscle group reacts to doing more or less. Otherwise you could very well be doing too much, or not enough.
I’m getting ready for a couple of shows next month, then the Teen Nationals in July. After you won the Teen Nationals in 1993, how long did you take off until you competed again? Also, how heavy did you get? I’m going to compete around 165 in July, and was wondering how long I should take off until I compete again. Should I worry about getting too fat during that time?
Man, you’re making me go way down memory lane now. You may not know that the year before I won the NPC Teen Nationals, I won the AAU Teenage Mr. America. I actually competed once more as a teenager and won the open NPC Texas at age 19. Back then my off-season weight was about 210-215. I took off five years after that to go to college and get my career as a trainer started, and in that time I brought my off-season weight up to 235.
When I was 24, I won a show called the Southwest USA at 212 pounds, then kept dieting for the USAs. I got down to 202, which was too small for me, but still took third place behind Tevita Aholelei and Troy Alves. The year after that I entered my second pro qualifier, the 2001 NPC Nationals, and got my pro card by winning the heavyweights. My buddy Johnnie Jackson won the light-heavies and the Overall.
I don’t suggest ever letting yourself get fat. You can make very decent gains while maintaining a reasonable condition where your abs are still visible, if not crystal-clear. I can’t tell you how long to wait until you compete again. That depends both on the progress you make with your physique, as well as what other things in your life need to be taken care of.
An Easy Prep— Really!
A lot of people were asking me about my prep for this show. Because I was so ripped and hard, most assumed it had been a miserable time and that I had suffered terribly to achieve that condition. Ironically, that was not the case.
After last year’s Mr. Olympia, I started talking to IFBB pro George Farah about doing my prep for the Arnold. It’s hard for me to really work with anyone because I feel I know my own body better than any coach could, but the more we talked the more I liked his approach. It actually reminded me a lot of how I used to get ready for contests back in the old days. There was no ‘keto’ crap, I assure you. My low-carb days were around 200 grams, and my higher carb days would be about 500-600 grams. In the past I have done as much as 2 hours of cardio a day. This time, I did no more than 20-30 minutes.
I now understand that for years, I overdid shit because I thought the way to win was to work that much harder than everybody else was willing to work. It’s really about working smarter, not harder. I can say with total confidence that you will never see me compete ‘off’ again. I wrote down everything I did on this diet. Even though your body changes and you don’t respond exactly the same every time, I still believe I have found my winning prep formula at last.
