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Reverse Crunch Thrust

June 28, 2008 By

Nothing says &quo;fitness&quo; like a six-pack. The hard part, of course, is getting one. A low-fat diet, regular cardiovascular exercise and fat-loss supplements like Lipo 6 Fat Burner can definitely help showcase a sixer, and your abs are used isometrically (without movement) to help stabilize your torso during virtually all exercises. Still, you need to perform exercises specifically for your rectus abdominis to expose its potentially awesome shape.

The decline reverse crunch with a hip thrust is one of the more difficult ab exercises to perform, but it’s also one of the most beneficial. The decline reverse crunch portion of this exercise helps strengthen the core muscles and hits the lower half of your abs more than any other movement. I prefer it to hanging leg raises because I can’t swing, which enables me to concentrate more on the contraction in my abs.

When this exercise is performed correctly, your abs contract from the bottom to depress your pelvis as your legs rise. (Picture a seesaw.) As your thighs become roughly perpendicular to the floor, your pelvis can’t tilt further, so the ongoing contraction in your abs causes the lumbar region of your lower spine to flex and your glutes to begin rounding up off the bench. Finishing the exercise by thrusting your hips toward the ceiling causes your spine to flex even further, bringing your glutes and low back off the bench and producing a more complete abdominal contraction.

To get it right, follow these eight steps:
1) Lie face up on an inclined crunch board with your head at the higher end. Grasp the ankle retainers or pole behind your head to avoid sliding.

2) To start, bend your knees and arch your back slightly, and place your feet together so that they hover above the end of the board. (If you’re a beginner, bend your knees a little more.)

3) Take a deep breath and, concentrating on feeling the movement in your pelvis, contract your abs to raise your legs, keeping your knees fixed in their slightly bent position. Exhale as you go.

4) As your legs approach an angle perpendicular to the floor, your lower spine should flex, raising your glutes slightly off the board.

5) Once your legs are roughly perpendicular to the floor, contract your abs even harder to thrust your hips and push your toes toward the ceiling, bringing your glutes, hips and low back completely off the board. (Only your shoulder blades and head should remain fixed on the bench at this point.)

6) Hold this upraised position momentarily and inhale.

7) Slowly reverse the motion, exhaling as you lower your legs until your feet almost touch the board again.

8) Inhale and repeat for reps to complete your set. One final note: If it feels like your hip flexors are doing more work than your abs, you’re probably doing the exercise incorrectly. Instead of flexing your hips and knees to pull your thighs toward your chest, concentrate on the movement taking place at your pelvis and on the contraction of your abs.

This killer ab move should get you off your butt. The reverse crunch thrust a difficult, but effective exercise.

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Bodybuilders Obsession with Mirrors3

June 24, 2008 By

FROM GYM TO STAGE
I don’t know why bodybuilders don’t know this, because it seems so obvious, but you should know about it. Implant this sentence into your mind: Whatever you look like in the gym, expect to look slightly less like that onstage. Your tan will be about 40% less, your definition will be 20% less, your density will be about 30% less. Okay, now that I’ve told you, I’ll now tell you why.

Regardless of the light sources in a gym, they are never as bright as they are onstage. Unless of course, someone is shooting a movie in your gym. Otherwise, the difference isn’t even close. Stage lights are super harsh, cut through your color like nothing, and show the judges everything. What you saw in the mirror on Friday suffers a serious meltdown on Saturday. Those mild gym lights treat your body better in the mirror than those harsh stage lights do during prejudging.

SEE REFLECTIONS ACCURATELY
Psychologists conducted a study whereby the subjects were placed in front of a grossly distorted mirror and then asked to correct the image until it resembled them most closely. They were shown how to manipulate two controls so that the mirror could change its shape. They were given as much time as was necessary to change the mirror’s shape and therefore master the task. Keep in mind that none of these people were mentally deficient. The result? The subjects tended to choose a reflection that represented more of a mental picture than a realistic one. They "enhanced" their looks, for example, by pulling receding jaws forward or pushing protruding ones backward. In short, they "corrected" themselves.

As a whole, bodybuilders are a bit more critical than the average citizen. This has to be the situation if improvement is to occur. However, it seems quite clear that, regardless of the lighting, time of day, or the shape some bodybuilders are in, they’ll only see what they want to. If you suspect that you may be one of these types, don’t worry. Ask someone with a known reputation for telling it like it is for a critique, and you’ll probably start winning contests.

SOLO SYMMETRY
Assuming everything is ideal, you can still look into the mirror and fall prey to a common mistake. So common, in fact, that you can’t really call it a mistake. It happens when you look into the mirror and simply assess yourself without comparison to someone beside you. This is also very likely to occur if you’re the only one in your gym getting ready for a show. As soon as someone who’s out of shape attempts to stand beside you, you’ll blow him away. Consequently, you’ll appear "extra" freaky. In essence, you are standing alone when you look in that mirror, you are doing a solo assessment. This can be dangerous because you have nothing substantive to compare yourself to.

When you go to that show, you may suddenly feel that you need some more size, or better symmetry or even deeper separation, simply because you now have someone to compare yourself to. Worse yet, many bodybuilders cannot see how they look standing in a lineup, so even though they may be contest ready but don’t place well because of some structural flaw, they start blaming the judges. After all, they flash back to how they looked in the gym mirror and how often everyone said "You’re gonna win." Assessing your physique from a solo standpoint requires a strong piece of advice: Make sure you know what you’re doing, and that means how you stack up as well.

I’ve reflected on many valuable points for bodybuilders, so consider them well for future successes. And remember, when you spot a competitor at a show who’s huge, cut, full, separated, dense and deeply tanned, you can confidently tell yourself, "It’s all done with mirrors!"

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Bodybuilders Obsession with Mirrors2

June 24, 2008 By

Bodybuilders should learn to use light sources as well as muscle building supplements to enhance their physical appearance.

LET THERE BE LIGHT
Imagine it’s the night before your contest. You just took a look at your muscles and felt they looked flat. So, you decide to take in more carbs. The next morning, you check yourself again and still look flat. In response, you continue to carb up. By the time you step onstage, you’re spilling over like a champagne bottle on New Year’s Eve. What happened?

Just as a certain lighting condition can make you look better than reality, some lights can also make you look worse. I’ve seen many bodybuilders who were perfectly on schedule look smooth, small and flat in the wrong light. The key is to follow the guiding light. Know which light provides which effect.

When you check yourself in the mirror, you’re totally dependent upon the available light source in that particular area. However, all light is not the same. The method of light creation can vastly affect the intensity it casts out, and this in turn can radically alter your total appearance. I’ve broken it down into three main groups in order to shed some light on the subject.

SUNLIGHT AS MAIN SOURCE
For those of you who have gazed through the book, Pumping Iron, I’m sure you’ll recall the outstanding black and white photos of Arnold at his prime, as well as the other greats of that time. Many of those shots were taken at the old Gold’s Gym, and used the afternoon sunlight as the main form of light. Sunlight is the most "precise" light. It has an even balance of the color wavelengths, is not overly harsh unless it is the light present at noon, and depending on the time, its low angle of occurrence is just perfect for highlighting muscular detail.

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Morning light has a slight blue overtone, and it also tends to make you appear very hard-looking when you view your physique in the mirror. Checking progress in this light can be depended upon for nutritional assessments or bodyfat and water level monitoring. Keep in mind that slight hardness-enhancement property. If you think you’re very hard, you should be looking like a freaked-out bundle of crushed rocks under flesh.

BULB LIGHT AS MAIN SOURCE
This is a wild-card kind of light. Smaller community type gyms usually use this light, and hotels have it in their rooms also. Remember, a lot of monitoring goes on in hotel rooms, because many of the big contests are held in far-off metropolitan locations.

Generally speaking, incandescent bulb light is much less intense than pure sunlight. It’s also much less reliable. I’ve seen myself look like the "Thing" from Marvel Comics, or on the other hand, like someone who needs to join a gym. To help you avoid the potential extremes, stand in the mirror so that this kind of light causes a shadow beneath your chin. This shadow should fall only to your collarbone. If it falls lower, you’ll darken yourself and flatten out. You’ll also look very sinister. If you back up, you won’t have enough relief to your muscles, so you’ll flatten out without enough light.

Bulb light in hotels can make you appear more cut than you actually are. Solution? Try posing in the washrooms (especially at Holiday Inns), there’s usually better light there than in the rooms. If you don’t look shredded in those mirrors, you probably shouldn’t compete. In summary, bulb light is the trickiest. Exercise caution when making any assessments in this light.

FLORESCENT LIGHT AS MAIN SOURCE
Whoever invented fluorescent light was obviously not a bodybuilder. This light is garbage. It’s too weak to show detail and too diffuse to allow shadowing. Offices use this kind of light, and that’s why you rarely see bodybuilders working in offices. Also, as if that’s not enough, fluorescent light emphasizes the yellow and green wavelengths. This makes you look sick and pale. About the only assessment you can make using this kind of light in a mirror is that you shouldn’t make any assessment at all. The following chart tells the story.

LIGHT INTENSITIES

  • Source Intensity in lumens
  • Morning sun 125,000
  • Electric filament bulb 500
  • Fluorescent tube 2
  • Candle 1

As you can see, fluorescent light isn’t much better than a candle. Oh sure, some fluorescent lights can be quite bright, and the principle behind it is impressive, but for checking your body in the mirror, you may as well use a flashlight. It just doesn’t show detail.

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Bodybuilders Obsession with Mirrors

June 24, 2008 By

Recently, I watched the modern version of Dracula on television- albeit there were no bodybuilders in the movie. The movie’s classic confrontation scene pits Frank Langella as Dracula against Sir Laurence Olivier as the good doctor. The doctor is busy looking into a mirror when he hears a sudden noise behind him, so he checks the mirror but sees nothing. He then turns around to find Dracula standing in the middle of the room. (For those of you who aren’t horror buffs, Dracula does not cast an image into a mirror because he is one of the undead.) Quickly, Dracula picks up a heavy candleholder and throws it violently at the mirror, smashing it into pieces. His line: "You’ll have to excuse me, I have a thing about mirrors."

Mirrors are to be looked at as tools in bodybuilding, just like weights and bodybuilding supplements are. That’s what this article is all about. It’ll change the way you look at mirrors, and it’ll change the way you look In them. As a bodybuilder, that change will do you a lot of good.

PLAYING FAVORITES
To start off, I’ll illustrate how a highly common practice among bodybuilders goes virtually unnoticed. Here’s how it happens.

You’ve just finished your bodybuilders arm workout and those pipes are pumped like crazy. So, you go ahead and check out that pump in the mirror. However, you don’t check it just anywhere in the mirror. Instead, you go over to your "favorite" location, the one that makes you look especially good. And, you just don’t stand in front of it. Rather, you stand at a specific, predetermined distance that gives you your best look. What’s wrong with that? Lots.

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In truth, you are not getting an accurate picture of your physical development. You have deliberately "maximized" your look under the best lighting conditions in the gym. Such a practice is great for doing photos, or showing your friends how freaky you look, but it is not accurate. Is an accurate look all that important? Well, would you like to prepare for a contest under the influence of a mind altering drug? Obviously not. In essence, however, that’s what you are doing: You’re "altering" your look. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just not an accurate practice.

Keeping things in perspective, we have to remember that we are people first, then bodybuilders. Everyone has a natural tendency to want to exaggerate things, not just bodybuilders. An artist’s conception of a particular house for sale always makes it appear bigger than when it is actually seen. Car commercials make the vehicles look out of this world with carefully selected camera angles and light enhancement. And those beer commercials, wow, don’t those parties look like fun? The trouble is I’ve never been to a party like that. Enlargement is a product of human nature and has been present in society since the very first "I caught a fish this big" story.

As a bodybuilder, you must make an effort to resist this tendency, and check yourself in various kinds of lighting situations, not just favorable ones. Believe me, scores of bodybuilders have lost contests simply because they entered with a false confidence that a "favorite" mirror location gave them.

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The Basics of Building Your Chest

June 24, 2008 By

When it comes to bodybuilding your chest is where your physique begins. As the center of the body’s mass, it holds a position of natural dominance over other bodyparts. When you see an impressive physique, your eye naturally focuses first at that center of mass, then follows with the assimilation of other details of the form. Because the chest is so conspicuous, it must be fully developed, thick and full on the top, sides and bottom, with strong shoulder tie-ins and separations.

That’s why the chest is the first bodypart I work in my training cycle. I train six days a week, twice a day, hitting the entire body twice during that period. Mondays and Thursdays I work chest in the morning, followed by triceps, then shoulders later in the day. Tuesdays and Fridays are for legs, and Wednesdays and Saturdays, for back and biceps. As you can see, I use the push-pull technique, throwing legs in between the two.

Prior to chest training, I always warm up my shouders with a few stretching movements, since the shoulders – especially mine – are stressed so heavily during a chest workout.

I mix up my chest exercises quite a bit. Some days I go with dumbbells; other days I’ll go with the straight bar. Lately, however, I’ve been staying with dumbbell movements because they seem to provide a much fuller extension and contraction, and, especially important in my case, they prevent my shoulders from coming into play as much. In fact, at times my shoulders have been an impediment to my efforts to maximize my chest development in that they take over the chest exercises. Even when I bring the barbell down in strict fashion, my shoulders always come into play first. Next, my triceps take over, and last is my chest. So in using dumbbells, I can concentrate that work directly into my chest from the start of each rep.

That’s not to say I don’t use barbells, because I like the feel of the heavy bar. It’s just that I have to work hard to position my body and arms properly if I want to minimize shoulder involvement. Along these lines there is one barbell technique that has worked well for me — keeping my elbows close to my body while using a false grip.

Bodybuilding Chest Routine
Simple, full, heavy, basic movements have worked best for my chest. They have brought it up considerably, so my program now is based on three exercises of four sets each for eight to 12 reps per set. I begin with flat bench dumbbell presses, and while it is a basic exercise, I vary it frequently, sometimes twisting the dumbbells as I press them upward and at other times keeping them in a fixed position.

The second exercise is the incline dumbbell press or, at times, an incline barbell press.

I finish with incline flyes. For these, I vary the motion constantly. Sometimes I touch the bottoms as I bring them up, sometimes the tops and sometimes the sides. I also contract different areas of my chest, depending upon which area I want to work.

Bodybuilding Chest With Free Weights
Since I try to hit my chest from all angles, I will often substitute other exercises for flyes in successive workouts, such as incline flyes, decline barbell presses and pullovers. (For pullovers, I lie lengthwise on the bench, bend my elbows slightly and bring the dumbbell no further forward than my forehead in order to concentrate the work into my upper chest.)

As you can see, for building mass I am a firm advocate of free weights. However I sometimes like to add cable exercises to really striate my chest. When I use cables, it’s from many different angles – standing, kneeling, lying on a bench, inclined, and at times pulling them together downward, other times straight to the front, and at still others, upward. Cables usually involve five sets for as many reps as I can get, up to 20.

Beginners should take a couple of basic movements and go with one or two sets. Their major objective should not be to lift as much weight as they can, but to concentrate on becoming accustomed to using the barbell or dumbbells correctly without worrying about their muscles getting bigger.

The idea is to keep it simple – only a few sound, basic exercises are needed in your bodybuilding chest training. That works better than anything. Then, constantly think your chest to the development stage you want, and eventually it will respond with explosive growth.

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