I simply can't build my shoulders/arms/calves...!

Everyone has these stubborn body parts that don't seem to grow, no matter what you do. But are you really doomed to have sub par arms or calves?

Well, that depends on how much you want it. While there are certain things that you just can't change such as muscle insertions, shape of the muscle and fiber composition, there is also the element of desire and will power.

If you determined enough, you can bring up any muscle.

Let's look at a real life example, an athlete ( we ll call him Jim) whose shoulders were lagging behind the rest of his body in terms of size and strength. He had torn a rotator cuff which severely limited his workouts. In addition, he works in a stressful environment, travels a lot and is past his thirties (the prime muscle building time). All in all, a less than perfect body building scenario.

So what did he do?

He prioritized his shoulders, worked them twice a week with a particular focus on the rear delt. After 12 months of hard work, his shoulders are now rounder and fuller that ever.

Way to go, Jim!

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Shaping vs. bulking exercises, what's the difference?

One of the most misunderstood  topics in bodybuilding is the belief that there are some exercises that are shaping or " defining" the muscle whereas others simply " bulk " it up. The shape or form of a muscle is genetically predetermined and can not be  altered.  

Usually the bench is seen as a bulk exercise for the chest, cable flyes as a shaping motion. While performing either exercise, however,  the pecs simply contract and relax. So where does this notion come from?

Most likely, it occurs that heavy benching is done in the off-season , when people are stronger and bigger. During the diet, especially when low on carbs, many athletes don't find the strength to perform heavy bench anymore so they resort to cable flyes for a chest workout. Since they are leaner, they conclude that the cable flyes must have done the trick , not the dramatically reduced calories and increased cardio.

So are all exercises created equal? Not quite. In my opinion, when training a muscle it necessary to perform a mid range or power movement and following with a stretch exercise. as an example , for chest, one would do incline presses followed by dumbbell flyes with an emphasis on the stretch.

by doing so , the athlete creates tissue tears which will enable further growth.

Train hard!

Maik

A word on Mike Mentzer or is there a holy grail?

During one my recent sessions, one of my clients brought up the training philosophy of the late Mike Mentzer.  Since this is one of the most interesting and controversial aspects in bodybuilding I decided this would be a good blog topic.

Mike Mentzer, Mr. America, Mr Universe (with perfect score) was an extremely talented and intelligent bodybuilder. During his early career, he followed the school of  Schwarzenegger and Weider , which was a high volume approach. Unsatisfied with his gains,he became convinced that the majority of people is over trained and drastically shortened his workouts. In conjunction with Arthur Jones, he created High Intensity Training or HIT. Basically, the trainee trained infrequently, 3-4 times every 2 weeks and did only one set beyond failure. He also added drop sets, negatives, partials etc.

Mike Mentzer became the Anti-Arnold  and spent 20 years of his life educating people about his style of training. He wrote several books on it, made training videos etc. In fact, he died in the midst of a DVD shoot in 2001 due to heart failure.

While this philosophy looks great in theory, there are several problems with it. First of, it is impossible to always train with maximum intensity . Secondly, the average person does not have sufficient neuro-muscular efficiency to reach all muscle fibers in one set. Hence, 2 or more sets are needed. Thirdly, constantly training at maximum intensity is very injury prone.

Does this mean that Mentzer was wrong? Not at all. He was the the first to point out that the majority of athletes do not sufficiently recover, restricted training to 60 minutes and he gave us negative reps.

Thanks Mike!