In the suffocating sweat sock of Florida’s Pompano Beach, with its heavy hissing midday air, motorists taking to the freeway do so with a dread not unlike that of entering Erebus, that benighted pit stop on the way to Hades; Ahmad Haidar sees that heat-shimmering snake of macadam wiggling its way into the city and eagerly straps it on like a leash.

Five days a week, year in, year out, Haidar has been lapping up that highway like a puppy dog, loving every mile, and the farther he drives, the hungrier he gets. His trip from home to the gym takes 45 minutes, but he wouldn’t mind an even longer time to stew. This is his chance to become immersed in the prep for his chest workout, where he can plumb his passion and start the momentum for what’s to come, running through every exercise, set, rep and sensation he’ll face. “When I walk through that door,” he exclaims, “I’m at full boil, ready-pumped and ready to go.” His is a silent burning, but one as evident as Florida’s steam. At first glance, he’s laconic, almost shy; but a slight thing, like the timbre of his voice, reveals more of his character than battles where thousands fall. The more Haidar describes the pile-driving pump he’ll feel in his upper chest, the delicious pain that will tear at his outer pecs or the drum-tight fullness he’ll build with a forced rep, the more you share his excitement. Bodybuilders brag about willing certain means to achieve certain ends, but Haidar extols the converse: throughout his 20 years of gym life, he has allowed experience to have its way with him, pitting one random training style against another, until only the best was left standing. Now, at 38, Haidar has arrived at the truth and has discovered that, as with all truths, it is blindingly simple: the best chest routine is based upon the four most basic exercises, each one performed with four sets of 10 repetitions. Chaos has congealed into predictability. “That was not always so,” Haidar confesses. “When you’re inexperienced, it’s not so much a matter of discovering what works as it is of discovering what doesn’t work. For example, I used a barbell for just about all of my chest exercises in the same workout–flat-bench presses, incline barbell presses, decline barbell presses–but I wasn’t building enough peripheral pec fullness or lower and medial separation.” He pauses, then adds, “But you learn.” His most valuable lesson? “Have patience, no matter how long it takes. Listen to others and eventually you can look back and notice what worked best for you,” he says. BODY SLAM Ironically, Haidar’s introduction to the art of muscle was not through weight lifting. His uncle, Hassan Bchara, who earned a bronze medal as a wrestler in the 1980 Olympics, took Haidar and his brother to a gym to learn wrestling. Then came the fateful day when Haidar’s uncle suggested that he needed to work out with weights to gain muscle. To wrestle, he was told, he needed a strong body. “I started liking the weights better than I liked wrestling,” Haidar says. “What I liked better was feeling the muscle getting pumped and actually seeing it bulging bigger and harder. It was an immediate sensation. It was exciting, and the more I felt the muscle working and pumping, the more I wanted. Wrestling did not give me that feeling.” Haidar was hooked on bodybuilding, and when that happens, its siren companion is a twinge of vanity that masquerades as motivating pride. “When you’re young,” Haidar admits, “you want to show off a little bit–’Oh, look, I have muscles’–and I felt a little bit of that when I started competing. I wanted to compete in Mr. Lebanon, and when I won Mr. Lebanon, ‘Oh, I want to win the Arab Championship’; then this, then that. Step by step. I still feel that way. My goal, now, is Mr. Olympia.” Patiently, he pursues the idealist’s goal of perfect balance for every muscle group in his body, as well as his muscular infrastructure. He doesn’t want his upper pecs, for example, to cantilever over his center or lower pecs, nor his lower pecs to jut prognathously past the uppers. Likewise, he wants his outer-pec sweeps symmetrical with his inner pecs. To this end, he employs three different chest routines that rotate sequentially in a Monday-through-Friday, five-days-on, two-days-off training split, in which he covers his entire body in four days. Bodypart order is chest and triceps on one day, followed by legs the next, shoulders and triceps the day after that, with back and traps the following day. This means that his Friday workout returns to the same bodyparts he trained on Monday. It also means that the bodypart workout sequence is different the next week. Furthermore–and this is a big furthermore–Haidar uses three different chest routines that rotate sequentially with each workout, further complicating things. Here’s how: the exercise order for the first chest workout is flat-bench presses, incline dumbbell presses, flat dumbbell flyes and standing cable crossovers. For his next chest workout, the order is incline barbell presses, flat dumbbell presses, incline dumbbell flyes and finishes with standing cable crossovers or decline presses. The movement he selects for the last exercise is determined by whether he feels his chest needs more pump or more fatigue at that point. If the former, he’ll use the dumbbells or cables; if the latter, he’ll go with heavy decline barbell presses. The next time he trains chest, the exercise order is decline barbell presses, flat dumbbell presses and incline dumbbell flyes, finishing with decline barbell or dumbbell presses, pec-deck flyes or standing cable crossovers. Again, for the last exercise, he’ll choose dumbbell presses, pec-deck flyes or standing cable crossovers if he thinks his chest needs more pump; if he thinks it needs more fatigue, he’ll go with decline barbell presses. “In every workout,” Haidar says, “I try to focus on each chest muscle independently, with separate exercises for upper pecs, middle pecs and lower pecs.” PUMP PLAN To economize on energy, Haidar is parsimonious with warm-ups, allocating only one set of 10 reps at 135 pounds for his first exercise, the bench press. From there on, he pyramids through four more sets of 10, adding a pair of plates at a time–225, 315, 405–up to his max set at 455, which he usually takes to failure at six reps. “I don’t like to do fewer than 10, but for power, it has to be done,” he explains. “At all times, though, I have a spotter with me, not only to help me get two more forced reps, but to stay with my movements, so that I can perform every rep, even the heaviest, slowly and with perfect control. Unless I do that, I can’t feel the pump; the pump is what I want. For some other muscles, such as biceps and calves, I want a burn; for chest, I want a pump.” From here on, no more warm-ups. Haidar charges into the first set of his remaining exercises with full power; again, four sets each, targeting 10 reps per set, but hoping, on the fourth set, to reach failure at eight reps, with two more forced. Incline dumbbell presses, for example, begin with 120-pounders, then 130s and 140s, all for 10 reps. His final set, with 150s, is for, as he says, “as many reps as I can.” Dumbbell flyes, too, are four pyramided sets, again with 10 reps through the first three. The last set is eight reps, plus two forced. Haidar warns: “With flyes, I make sure I do not bring the dumbbells lower than chest level. That would invite injury.” The only exercise for which the angle does not change in successive workouts is his last: standing cable crossovers. That’s because Haidar performs them in the only style that’s worthwhile: one that activates the most muscles through a greater range of motion and with the most resistant contraction. “I mimic a most-muscular pose,” he says, “bringing my hands together at a low angle, to hit my lower pecs; I do not cross my hands. I use a lot of weight for four sets of eight to 10 reps, and I flex hard, with a peak contraction.” Surround and conquer is Haidar’s strategy for chest: build a foundation of mass by means of old-fashioned free-weight movements, then attack the pecs from all angles, to tweak their peripherals and give them the definition that has earned him the reputation as bodybuilding’s beau ideal of refinement.

Four to grow by

1

Find the routine that works best for you. Learn from the pros, but don’t copy them. I followed Arnold Schwarzenegger, Samir Bannout and others, but the time came when I had to modify those lessons to do what worked best for my body. Listen to your own body. You will find that some exercises your idol uses won’t necessarily work best for you.

2

Don’t overtrain. Yes, there is such a thing. It’s possible to burn a muscle to the point where it no longer fires. If you’re using heavy basic free-weight exercises and going to failure, 16 sets per muscle group are enough.

3

Ideal repetitions are eight to 10, but push the weight. Make sure the eighth or ninth rep is a failure rep; then, use a spotter for forced reps. If I can get 10 reps without a spot, it’s time to increase the weight.

4

Rest between sets only long enough for your training partner to do his set. Don’t let the pump subside; don’t lose your intensity. Your body and your mind need to retain the sensation of the previous difficult set.

Ahmad Haidar’s training split

Haidar trains Monday through Friday, with Saturday and Sunday off; however, he covers his entire body in four days, which means that his Monday workout is repeated on Friday. The workouts then continue, in rotational order, the following week.

1. Chest, biceps, calves and abs
2. Legs
3. Shoulders, triceps, calves and abs
4. Back and traps

For some reason, my front delts simply aren’t very developed. My middle and rear delts are doing okay, but when I look in the mirror, my shoulders don’t appear as thick and full as I think they should be, and they don’t tie in to my pecs very well. Here’s my shoulder workout. What can I do to bring up my front delts?
Sincerely, Delt a Bad Hand

Dear Delt a Bad Hand,

The first thing you need to do is make sure your shoulder workout centers around your front deltoids. You can do this in ways other than simply adding more front raises.

First, replace your overhead dumbbell presses with either overhead barbell or Smith machine presses to the front at least every other workout. Reason being, any overhead press in which you lower the bar in front of your face will target the front delts in addition to the middle delts. With dumbbell presses, the tendency is to keep the weights out to your sides, which doesn’t place any extra stress on the front delts. Also, we see that upright rows are absent from you routine–add them in, as they’ll help.

The next thing you should do is change the angle on your front raises–specifically, add incline barbell front raises to your routine on a regular basis. This exercise is great for keeping constant, isolated tension on the front delts. The form is simple: Lie faceup on an incline bench and use a palms-down grip on a relatively light barbell. Begin with the bar at arm’s length just above your thighs. Contract your front delts to lift the bar (keeping your arms straight) until it’s just shy of perpendicular to the floor. Lower it back down without letting the bar rest on your quads between reps. This is just one example of a front-delt isolator you should add to your routine; get creative with other front raises as well, using cables, one-arm variations and other options to shock your muscles.

The “pimped-out” routine below incorporates all the exercises we’ve just mentioned to bring up your front delts. Yet overall balance, especially in the oft-injured shoulder joint, is key, which is why you’ll finish your routine with rear-delt raises or flyes. The last thing we want is for you to come back to us in a few months complaining about your lagging rear delts.

What’s the difference between doing chest pullovers and lat pullovers? Should the exercise be modified depending on which bodypart you’re trying to work?

A:

You may have noticed that some bodybuilders do pullovers in their chest routines while some do them for their backs. What gives? Well, both the pecs and lats, not to mention the long heads of the triceps, are involved in pullovers. (One muscle that’s often thought to be involved but isn’t is the serratus anterior.)

Which muscle you’re stressing the most depends on the range of motion (ROM) you use. The chest and triceps’ long heads are maximally involved when you move from the overhead position (or beyond) to perpendicular to the body. The pecs span from the sternum and collarbone all the way to a tendon on the front of the humerus (upper arm bone). Because they’re located on the front of the body, they have the strongest line of pull from this position. Once the arms are perpendicular to the body, the pecs aren’t able to pull the arms farther.

The long head of the triceps is maximally involved because it’s stretched in this overhead position, allowing it to contract with the utmost force. The closer the arms come toward perpendicular to the body and beyond, the less the stretch in the triceps’ long heads and the less help they provide.

The lats are also involved to assist the pecs in bringing the arms from overhead to perpendicular, but they don’t get the most emphasis in this ROM. Because they’re attached to the spine, they’re at a biomechanical disadvantage here. The ROM in which the lats are maximally involved is moving the arms from perpendicular to the body to the sides. Since the chest can’t provide much pull in this ROM, the lats take over to complete the move.

Of course, if you’re performing pullovers on a flat bench, the ROM stops when your arms are perpendicular to your body. After that point, if you continue to extend your arms, the weight will just fall toward your hips. One way to overcome this and emphasize the lats is to use a decline bench, which allows you to increase the ROM. By declining your head, your hips are higher and the point at which your arms are perpendicular to the floor is no longer where they’re perpendicular to yourbody, as they’re now closer to your hips.

Final thought

The pullover does involve both the pecs and lats, as well as the triceps’ long heads. Yet you can place greater emphasis on the chest or back depending on which ROM you use.

For chest, perform pullovers lying crosswise on a flat bench and maintain a slight bend in your elbows, emphasizing the stretch as you drop the weight behind your head. We suggest using a dumbbell.

For lats, do your pullovers on as much of a decline as possible, maintaining a slight bend in the elbows to protect them from strain. We suggest using a barbell. Another way to increase the ROM at the bottom of the pullover is to use a decline bench and a low-pulley cable. This lets you bring the bar all the way to your hips for the greatest lat involvement. This version mimics the straight-arm pulldown, which is simply a pullover done standing up.

Done correctly, the pullover can seriously develop chest and lats

We’ve hit the lab once again because you keep putting us to the test. This month we examine the biceps curl, comparing the barbell version with dumbbells. Keep the questions coming.

Your question

Which is better for building big biceps–the barbell curl or dumbbell curl?

What we did

We had 10 highly trained athletes participate in this study of muscle activation through EMG analysis. We measured muscle activity in both the short and long head of the biceps. The athletes performed both the barbell curl and dumbbell curl using 75% of their one-rep max (1RM) for four repetitions each.

What we found

The barbell curl and the dumbbell curl both involved the short (inner) head and the long (outer) head of the biceps similarly, with the short head being stimulated to a greater degree.

For discussion

The debate over performing biceps curls with a barbell vs. dumbbells could be of less importance than ensuring that you incorporate multiple angles in your biceps training. Both a barbell and dumbbells will hit the short and long heads of the muscle similarly. However, they both seem to focus the stress more on the short or inner head. Because the long or outer head gives the biceps the peak, be sure you don’t rely solely on barbell and dumbbell curls. Instead, include exercises that are known to stress the long head, like the EZ-bar curl and seated incline curl.

Final thought

Your arms might lag behind because you’re doing the same routine every week. First you hit the dumbbell rack and bang out some curls, or you head to the fixed barbells and follow suit, right? Well, next time you hit the gym, start with barbell or dumbbell curls, then move to the incline bench, where your arms are angled in such a way that the long head is highly stimulated, then do preacher curls to focus more on the short head. Keep mixing it up for maximum gains!

Big, round, wide cannonball delts are the mark of a hardcore bodybuilder. To make them huge, pressing some serious poundage is essential. Heavy dumbbell presses are one of the best ways to go for full deltoid development, but if you’re stuck on the 50-pounders, you’ll never get those caps.

Sometimes you have to take an alternate route to increase your strength. Here’s a program that’s designed to add a good 20 pounds to your dumbbell press. Any takers?

Get ready

This program actually is a training secret that many Olympic weightlifting champions have used to increase their pressing strength. All that’s required is a set of dumbbells and an adjustable bench, preferably one that goes from flat to upright in many increments, like the Ironmaster Super Bench shown in the photo above. The trick is that you start by doing flat-bench presses with a certain weight and slowly increase the bench angle over several weeks while using the same weight until you can press it overhead.

Get set

The first step involves finding a set of dumbbells with which you can do 8-10 reps of the flat-bench dumbbell press. The second step is to find an adjustable bench that allows you to make about eight increments similar to those found in Big Delt Program.

Grow

Do three sets of the presses (using the weight you can get for 8-10 reps on the flat bench throughout the entire program) at the appropriate angle first thing on chest days during Phase 1 and first thing on shoulder days during Phase 2. After you complete the cycle, stick with that weight on the seated overhead dumbbell press for several weeks before starting the program again with a new weight.

Big delt program

Follow the program as designed below. The example is for someone who can flat-bench dumbbell press 85 pounds for 10 reps. Reps shown below are hypothetical. After eight weeks this bodybuilder can now do over-head dumbbell presses with 85 pounds for about seven reps.

Phase 1

Phase 1 training will be performed during your chest workouts. Do three
sets of dumbbell presses at the corresponding angle for that week at the
very beginning of your workout. Finish with two or three other chest
exercises.

Phase 2

Phase 2 training will be performed during your shoulder workouts. Do
three sets of dumbbell presses at the corresponding angle for that week
at the very beginning of your workout. Finish with two or three other
shoulder exercises.

One overlooked variable for many bodybuilders, however, is rep speed. The prevailing mantra is slow and steady, contracting the working muscle as forcefully as possible at the apex of each rep. Good advice, yes … but you can do better. In fact, by using the full spectrum of rep speed, from slow to fast, in your overall program, you can maximize your growth. Isn’t that really what it’s all about?

The fast and the furious

The speed of each rep you perform depends on the weight being lifted, the number of reps being performed and the level of fatigue of the muscle being trained. Usually, most reps are done in a slow and controlled manner, about one to two seconds for the positive and one to two seconds for the negative. Of course, as you go heavier and the muscle fatigue intensifies, the positive portion of the rep takes longer and the negative part of the rep accelerates. Generally speaking, typical speed is about three to four seconds per rep.

Training with reps that are faster than the typical three to four seconds can be beneficial for a number of reasons.

• When you perform the positive portion of your reps explosively–taking less than one second to complete them–your fast-twitch muscle fibers are called into action to a greater degree. Fast-twitch muscle fibers produce the greatest muscle force (i.e., strength) and have the highest potential for growth. The other major type of fibers found within your muscles–slow-twitch fibers–produce less force and are smaller than the fast-twitch fibers, but they have greater endurance capacity.
• Fast reps may focus the workload more on the intended muscles. Some research suggests that fast-rep training relies more on the major muscle groups performing a particular exercise and less on the assistance muscles that help. For example, one study found that doing biceps curls with a fast rep speed predominantly used the biceps brachii muscle, as opposed to the brachialis muscle that normally assists in a biceps curl.

Slower rep training, however, placed greater stress on the brachialis muscle and a little less on the biceps brachii. Although little research has been done in this area, it’s reasonable to assume that this holds true for other exercises besides biceps curls. By doing chest exercises with a very fast rep speed, you will preferentially use the pectoralis muscles; doing fast-rep back exercises will preferentially use the lats, etc.

• Training at a fast rep speed increases the pace at which your muscles can move a given weight. The faster you can move a given weight, the more power you have. Power is important for overall muscle strength because it helps you accelerate a weight, so increasing power will successfully increase your strength.

Research shows that the best way to train with high reps is to pick a weight that is about 50% of your one-rep max or a weight that you can lift for 25-30 reps. The trick is to do only three to five reps with that weight for each set. This may seem too easy to do any good, but it’s necessary to prevent fatigue.

Doing too many reps when training with fast reps will only compromise your speed and can lead to injury if your form breaks. Perform each rep with explosive power, completing the positive portion as fast as possible. Return the weight to the start position in a slow and controlled manner.

Fast-rep training usually calls for multijoint exercises, such as bench presses, squats, shoulder presses, rows and dips. Do only three sets per exercise and only two to three exercises per bodypart. Train each muscle group twice per week, as in the “Fast Gains” chart we’ve provided in this article.

Slow down

Just as fast-rep training has its advantages, training with slow reps can also offer benefits.

• Slow-rep training reduces momentum and forces the muscle to do more of the actual work. This can improve your overall strength and muscular size.
• Both slow- and fast-twitch muscle fibers are recruited, imparting gains on both. At the start of a slow-rep set, slow-twitch muscle fibers are predominantly used. As fatigue sets in, more fast-twitch fibers are called in for support. When you reach failure, you have successfully hit all the muscle fibers you can in that exercise.
• Depending on how slow your reps go and how many reps you do, some sets can last up to three minutes, extending the time the muscle is under tension. This will fatigue the muscle far beyond anything you are used to. Muscle fatigue is important for stimulating size adaptations, increasing growth hormone and IGF-I (growth factor) levels. In addition, research has found that training with slow reps can increase strength gains better than normal rep training.

To train with slow reps, choose a weight that is 50-70% of the weight you could normally lift for each exercise for five reps. Five reps may seem easy with this weight, but trust us, you’ll be lucky to finish five before your muscles fail.

Start the positive portion of the rep slowly and methodically. It should take approximately 10 seconds to complete just the positive. Hold the weight in the contracted position for about two seconds. Lowering the weight will be even more painful, as you’ll take 10 seconds to return to the start position. You should reach muscle failure by five reps. If you can do six or more reps, increase the weight for the next set. If you can’t complete at least four reps, lessen the weight.

When training with slow reps, choose more isolation exercises than multijoint, and do only one or two sets per exercise and only two or three exercises per muscle group. Due to the high intensity of this training program, work each muscle group only once per week as shown in the “Go Slow to Grow” chart.

Life in the fast/slow/fast lane

To take advantage of all the benefits of rep-speed manipulation, follow the “Speed-Up/Slow-Down Cycle.” It begins with normal rep speeds (three to five seconds per rep) for two weeks, then speeds things up for two weeks with fast-rep (one to three seconds per rep) training. Then it’s back to normal rep speeds for another two weeks before hitting the brakes with two weeks of slow-rep training (about 20-25 seconds per rep). After that, return to normal-speed reps for two weeks.

You can continue in this cycle endlessly if you’re so inclined. We suggest you try it for at least eight weeks, to see how far and fast it takes you.

NOTES:

Use your current workouts and training split during the normal-speed weeks. Refer to the “fast” and “slow” charts for exercises and training splits to use during these weeks.
It may be low-rep, but it’s high intensity, as you’ll find after a two-week “Fast Gains” cycle.

A guy at my gym told me not to waste time training forearms, because you either have them or you don’t. Mine are stubborn, so should I even bother training them?

A:

You think your forearms are stubborn? You should meet the mule we keep at Haney’s Harvest House!

In all seriousness, absolutely train your forearms. They are part of your whole body and, as a bodybuilder, it’s your duty to train them, just like any other bodypart. It is true that the forearm muscles can be quite stubborn for some people, but that is no reason to avoid training them. Think of it as a challenge to make them grow.

Forearm training is a simple matter for me. I knew from the start that they didn’t require many different exercises, because they receive a lot of stimulation from other upper-body workouts. So I would simply do one exercise to hit the flexor muscles of the forearm and one to hit the extensors.

For the flexor portion, which is the side in line with your palms, I recommend barbell wrist curls. I prefer doing higher reps for forearms than for other bodyparts since they’re designed to take so much stress throughout the typical day. With the lickin’ they get from doing daily chores and activities, you have to give them some extra work if you want them to respond.

Load a barbell with a weight that will allow you to get 15 to 20 reps, and place it on the floor at the end of a bench. Now grasp the barbell with an underhand grip, keeping your thumbs below the bar. Sit on the end of the bench and rest your elbows on your knees. Then curl the barbell up and let it slowly drop back down until your hands are hanging. Make sure not to swing or jerk the weight, as this is a sure-fire way to pull something. Do three or four sets of these, remembering to concentrate on your form, not the weight. Sometimes, I would put only a 25-pound plate on each side of an Olympic bar for these. If my forearms burned afterward, that was all that mattered.

Next, I suggest doing reverse wrist curls. This is basically the opposite movement of the one you just performed. Take an overhand grip this time, making sure to keep your thumbs under the bar for support. You will definitely have to go lighter for this exercise as you put yourself at a mechanical disadvantage in comparison with standard wrist curls. Again, aim for 15 to 20 reps, three or four sets.

Train your forearms twice a week, but not on arm day. You want to have the strength to really focus on your forearms, but if they’ve just spent the last half hour working on preacher curls, dumbbell curls and pushdowns, they’re going to be sapped already. Ideally, you should train them with legs. That way, they’ll be fresh by the time you get to them.

Whatever days you decide to train them, please don’t give up on your forearms. They may be stubborn as a mule, but that doesn’t mean they won’t budge. Trust me on this one.

The ectomorph is the lucky body type that doesn’t carry much body fat, but are unlucky in that their body burns a lot of calories per day normally. In order to increase body weight, this type of person would need to increase calorie levels in stages until a pound in body weight is being added per week. The ectomorph’s diet is crucial to increasing muscle tissue from their training. They should use a calorie level of 20-25 times their bodyweight in pounds as a starting position for calorie level. Example; a 140 lb lifter would use a starting calorie level of between 2800-3500 calories per day.

Meals should be split into 6-8 meals (including weight gainer drinks) per day, split into meals every 2.5 – 3 hours throughout the day. Protein intake should be 25%-30% of total calories; carbohydrates should be approx 50% of total calories; and fats at approx. 20%-25% of total calories. A meal or meal replacement shake should be taken before bed. Simple sugars should be limited or avoided totally.

Eat lower glycemic index foods such as brown rice, whole grain pasta, whole grain breads, yams, oats, sweet potatoes, whole grain foods. Supplement the diet with a good branded multivitamin and mineral. Essential fats should come from the following foods. Olive oil, peanut oil, canola oil, nuts and seeds, vegetable oils (safflower, corn, sunflower, cottonseed oil), fatty cold water fish (salmon, mackerel and herring), flaxseeds, flax oil and walnuts.

Recommend Supplements For This Workout:

1. Whey Protein (pre/post workout)
2. Creatine (daily/post workout)
3. Multi-Vitamin (every morning)

Important Training Notes

• Aerobic activity should be kept to a minimum.
• Warm up with a cardio session for 5-10 minutes.
• Stretch the worked muscles at the end of the workout.
• Cool down when finished training with 5-10 minutes of cardio.
• Use a repetition timing of 2-1-2 seconds.
• Keep rest time between sets at 2 minutes.
• Keep rest time between exercises at 3 minutes.
• Keep workout time as short as possible.
• Get at least 8 hours sleep per night.
• Perform abdominal exercises on Monday and Thursday, or Tuesday and Friday.

Wednesday – Rest Day

Sunday & Saturday – Rest Days

• Barbell squat Stand with a barbell resting on your shoulders and traps with your feet about shoulder-width apart. Maintain the natural arch in your lower back and keep your head directed forward. Bend at the knees and hips, letting your glutes track backward to lower yourself. When your thighs are parallel to the floor, reverse direction, driving up forcefully through your heels to a standing position. Repeat for reps.
• Smith machine squat Stand in a Smith machine with a shoulder-width stance and the bar across your shoulders and traps. With your chest high, keep your head forward and maintain the arch in your back. Bend at the knees and hips as if you’re sitting back in a chair until your thighs are parallel to the floor. Reverse the motion by driving through your heels and pressing your hips forward to return to the starting position. Repeat for reps.

The evidence

One major difference between the barbell squat and the Smith machine squat is how far you can bring your feet in front. With the barbell, there is only one position-feet directly under the bar. In contrast, the Smith machine follows a fixed path, thereby removing the need to balance it, so you can bring your feet out to various distances.

In 2002, the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research reported that the farther the feet are positioned in front of the Smith machine bar, the less quad involvement and the greater hamstring/glute involvement. When the feet were directly under the bar, the hamstrings and glutes received little emphasis, while the quads got almost all the focus. When the feet were about 12 inches in front, the quads and hams/glutes were fairly evenly emphasized. When the feet were placed about 18 inches in front, the hams and glutes reveived the greatest emphasi, glututes received the greatest emphasis, with the quads getting only a little.

Another difference between the barbell squat and the Smith machine squat is strength. Researchers from Drake University (Des Moines, lowa) eported that when 32 trained lifters tested their one-rep max for the Smith machine squat, they were about 5% stronger than on the free-weight squat. The researchers suggested that the strength increase forthe Smith machine squat may be due to the reduced need for balance, thus allowing a focused effort on driving the bar straight up.

The verdict

Both exercises should be incorporated in leg training. Although the Smith machine squat has been shown to allow heavier training and the forward adjustment of foot positioning, the fixed nature of the Smith machine doesn’t call numerous stabilizer muscles into play. Over time, this can decrease strength and even increase the risk of injury. Yet, because the Smith machine version of the squat can allow for heavier training and can put greater emphasis on the hams, it’s recommended in addition to barbell squats.

Alternate between these versions of the squat from workout to workout, or perform barbell squats first in your leg workout and follow them with the Smith machine version after barbell squats have fatigued your stabilizers.

References

K.G.Abelbeck, “Biomechanical model and evaluation of a linear motion squat type exercise,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 16(4):516-24,2002; M.L Cotterman et al., “Comparison of muscle force production using the Smith machine and free weights for bench press and squat exercises,” Journal’ofstrengthandConditioning Research, 19(1):169-76, 2005

Defense
Bodybuilders have been doing incline bench presses for decades to bring up the upper chest.

Prosecution
Research on incline and reverse-grip bench presses suggests that reverse-grip bench presses my be a better upper-pec builder.

Evidence

• Australian researchers reported in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research that when weight-trained subjects performed incline bench presses, the muscle activity of their upper pecs was only about 5% more than the muscle activity of their upper pecs during the flat bench press.
• Canadian scientists found that when trained lifters did the reverse-grip bench press, the muscle activity of their upper pecs was 30% greater than when they did the bench press with a standard overhand grip.

Verdict

Reverse-grip bench presses
Since muscle activity is the measurement of how many muscle fibers are being used during an exercise, reverse-grip bench presses appear to be a better exercise for the upper chest than incline bench presses.

Sentencing
To target the upper pecs, start your chest workout with 3 or 4 sets of reverse-grip bench presses. Then, move on to incline bench exercises, such as incline presses and flyes.

Example of reverse grip benching

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCwrSFdeXyQ