Training

Biceps :

5 Sets: Main Exercise: SZ-Curls, Barbell Curls, Dumbell Curls or Seated Dumbell Curls

3 Sets: Isolation Exercise: Concetration-Curls or Scott-curls (Dumbell or Barbell),

3 Sets: Brachialis: Hammercurls, Scott-Hammer-Curls or Hammer-curl maschine

3 Sets: Pump: High Barbell Curls with light weight or Reverse Barbell Curls

4 Supersets of Forearms

Example for a “Pump-training”:

4 sets One-Arm cable curls with 4 sets Pushdowns

4 sets high cable curls with 4 sets Dip machine

4 sets Hammer-cable curls with 4 sets one arm cable pushdowns

Like for many tall Bodybuilders, Arms is also for myself a weaker muscle group compared to the rest of the body. That means for me to emphasize the focus on this muscle and to work on it even more special. Truly, Arms and Calves can probably never be big enough. As long as they don’t grow in a totally freaky way they won’t harm your symmetry and for this reason, even people having relatively strong arms, can possibly use my strategy to stimulate the Arms to new levels of growing.

A long time I trained Biceps very heavy and basicly I just focused on the amount of weight.

The results were great so far but after one year I found another big mistake I was doing over the years. I trained the Brachialis only every few weeks, but I seen that this muscle is almost not visible on all of my stage pictures. So the Brachialis became another big part of every Biceps workout. I still need to work on it, but after 2 years I can say that it improved already.

But speaking about the facts of my current Biceps workout, I want to give some numbers:

You can see the really heavy part of my workout consists only of nine Sets, as the first exercise includes 2 warm-up sets. So I limit my workout to a few exercises and keep the focus on a controlled movement, using the whole range of motion and taking the highest possible amount of weight to get 6-8 reps.

But there is another day of the week, when I train my arms again.

Basicly the heavy training, you read about just a few lines ago, reminds on an European way of training, but on my many trips to the USA I also seen many Americans training quite successfully their arms only by pumping the muscles. I never really get a satisfied feeling by doing only a “pump-training”, but as it seems to work for them, it was also worth for me to try. So I added another Training Session, only consisting of cable exercises, to my weekly schedule.

In this training I am using Supersets by combining one biceps exercise with one triceps exercise. At my heavy Arm-training day, I prefer to train biceps in the morning and triceps in the evening. On the “Pump-day” I stay around 12-15 reps and the results in 2009 got better and better.

Truly, my arms still need a lot of work, but they slowly start to match the rest of my body.

Triceps :

4 sets Pushdowns

4 sets Skull Crushers

4 sets Kick backs

3 sets dips on a bench (only in diet)

The triceps is probably the easiest muscle to stimulate it’s growing.Basicly you cannot do anything wrong unless you start to cheat in an extremely brutal way.

Most of the movement is happening by itself and as long as you really push the weight in a proper way, you can be sure that the triceps gets some work.

For competitive Bodybuilders it should be also important to mention that you have to listen to the body again, especially with this muscle. If you train too heavy or simply not in the right way, soon you might get problems with your joints. It is more important for me to use the whole range of motion, when doing pushdowns for example, instead of using a freaky weight.

I have seen a few Pros already getting some kind of infection at the tendon and because of that they needed a surgery which destroyed the shape of the triceps completely. The muscle looks torn and the loss of symmetry is the sad result.

Next to Pushdowns which is definitely a “must to do” in every training I can say that French Press or also called Skull Crushers are probably the best exercise to develop the triceps based on my experience.

Back

My training schedule is a bit more difficult to write down.

Every other week I put more focus on rowing exercises, while I concentrate much more on pulling exercises in the other week :

Week 1:

5x Front Pulldowns

5x Barbell Rows

3x T-bar Rows

3x Hammer Strength Rows

3x Narrow Pulldowns

5x Hyperextensions

Week 2:

5x Front Pulldowns

3x Reverse Pulldowns

3x Narrow Pulldowns

3x Dumbbell Rows

3x Pullovers

5x Deadlifts

Especially for the back the style of your training will decide if you get a nice and detailed back on stage or if you will be just average.

Unlike other muscles the Back needs a lot of work every week. In my opinion you cannot develop a great back by only doing a few exercises and by just pumping this muscle. The back needs full-contraction and need to be attacked intensively from all sides.

Because of all this, back is much more difficult to train than other muscles.

In order to guarantee a huge back development it is essential to train back with really heavy weights of course, but the key of success for the back is to contract the muscle as hard as you can in the end of the movement. I recommend everyone to hold the weight for half a second in the top position of the movement before starting the negative part of the repetition. If you are not able to do this with your current training weights, you definitely use too much and the results can be improved by using this technique with lighter weights instead.

Another important rule for my back workouts is to stretch the muscle with every repetition and also between the sets. I do believe this is the reason why my lats became much wider over the years.

I figured out for myself that my back workout should always consist of at least 16 sets not counting the lower back. Usually I even add one exercise for the backside of shoulders also, so you can imagine that back day can easily become a harder training day than legs.

A huge muscle like the back, needs a lot of training volume to get completely exhausted and it is almost impossible to get this muscle into overtraining within one workout.

Push yourself to the limit when hitting your back at the gym. You will be surprised about the results.

5 Incline Press Barbell

3 Incline Dumbbell Flyers

3 Dumbbell Press

3 Cable Cross

3 Pullovers (Barbell)

For Beginners chest is really difficult to train. To perform chest exercises in a productive way for stimulating the chest to grow, you need a really strong mind to muscle connection. As soon as you start to not totally focus on the chest itself, many other muscles will immediately take a big part of the training weight and in this moment it gets almost impossible to develop your chest in the same way like the rest of your body.

In order to avoid this, there are many possibilities. First of all you can start every chest workout with an isolation exercise. In this way you pre-exhaust your pecs and when doing bench press afterwards, you won't be tempted that much to use weights, that are probably too heavy for your chest (even if you might be able to bench them, by using the help of shoulders and triceps).

When starting with the bench press, it is really important to always keep the clear movement in your mind. You need to put your mind completely into the muscle and to feel actively how it contracts with every rep. I recommend to let down the barbell in the negative movement almost to your throat and not to the middle of your chest, like most people do it. Again you take away the work from your shoulders by doing this and the focus goes more into your pecs.

Another good attempt for improving this muscle might be to use only the first part of the active movement. When benching on a Smith machine or also Hammer Strengh machines, you can intensify the isolation of your chest by doing these non-finished reps. You still stretch to the maximum and then push the weight only a bit more than half of the way. In the end of the complete movement you will realize that normally the chest starts loosing its full contraction and so you can say, that the important part of the repetition is already made before.

Another important hint, that made my chest grow much bigger last year, is to push the weight explosively in the beginning, doing the negative movement really controlled and keeping the weight for half a second in the lowest position.

You will see that you cannot use the same amount of weights anymore, but as most of us are not trying to break benching records, our chest development will greatly benefit of these strategies. I cannot even call it secrets or "strategies" as I simply try to make others realize again how important the smart usage of weights should be and how necessary it becomes to develop the ability to feel the muscle.

When watching many Pros under this point of view, you will realize how perfect it looks the way they execute their exercises. It all comes from the deep muscle - mind connection we all can develop over the years, if we concentrate on it and allow ourselves to feel our training more than seeing it with our eyes only.

Especially for competitive athletes, I would like to add to put more focus on the upper chest. I recommend to start every workout with the incline exercises.

Moreover incline bench press is a much more secure movement to avoid injuries than flat bench press. With the barbell I started to completely avoid flat bench press and I prefer doing this exercise with dumbbells. Almost everyone I know, who torn his chest, got this injury when doing flat bench presses on a barbell.

One thing I also tried this year for a period of three months was to train one chest exercise (basicly some isolation movement) with extremely light weights on every day. Just 4-5 sets and just to get some blood into the muscle on every day. I am quite convinced about the positive effect and so I might repeat this in my next offseason again.

I hope I was able to give you some ideas and some motivation to try some new things.

Always remember that the strongest muscle is your mind. Also in Bodybuilding it is like this.

The Bodybuilder with the strongest mind will be the best guy on stage. Not only because he learned how to put all the focus into his muscles but also because of becoming the strongest personality and being able to follow his dreams driven by the inner power, that is inside of everyone of us.

         * 5x Heavy/Repetition Exercise: Frontsquat, Squat, Hacksquat

        * 4x Hacksquat (if not done before) / Leg presses

        * 3x Extensions

        * 3x Smith-maschine Squats / Lunges

Training legs can be a nightmare in the eyes of some athletes while others simply love it. With no other muscle group you can push your body so close to your limits like when training legs.

No other training will boost your metabolism in such a dramatic way over the whole week not even speaking about the positive influence on your hormones.

On the first view heavy squats might be the foundation to establish a good leg development, but there are definately many other techniques that might result in even better quads and Hams when combining them.

Doing heavy squats over the years will result in a great strengh level as well,

but at my point right now it is more a curse to be that strong than anything else, concerning the aspect of Bodybuilding of course. Once you start being able to squat over 600lbs for 6-8 reps it is definately not healthy for your knees anymore. Especially not when doing this on a weekly base.

The most important aspect of developing (and also keeping) huge quads for many years is to keeps your joints healthy. Once they start to make problems, you will never be able anymore to put the same intensity in your leg workouts anymore, which results in a loss of volume with no mercy. I remember having a time, I had pain in my knees after every leg session and it did not stop until the day before the next workout. I told myself that this cannot go well for many years and to be successful in Bodybuilding it is important to stay in the business for a long time.

So how can you avoid this pain without even letting it start to influence you.

I was searching for other ways to stimulate my legs for growing and those were my experiences:

Instead of doing normal squats I started to go for frontsquats but as soon as you learn the technique and get used to it, you will have the same problem of squatting too heavy. I made it up to a training weight of 470lbs again and so my knees started to complain again after every workout.

I still believe heavy squat days are important, but for now I am only doing them super heavy once in a month.

My other workouts are more likely based on repetitions now. This doesn't mean I am not pushing my limits anymore, but for example I am going now for frontsquats 15-20reps with 400lbs or doing 20reps of normal squats with 450 lbs. It is much more joint-friendly and I figured out that this search for alternatives even turned into a blessing, as my legs started to get more massive again, but still keeping a better separation.

I have the feeling, that with such a style of training, you really burn the separation into your muscle.

At least once in a month I do Hacksquats for my main exercise. The only way to develop the outer quads is this exercise and so it is more essential than most people believe.

In every workout, If its not my first exercise, it is definately the second one.

After those two exercises I can assure you that your quads are screaming already and so you should just continue to give those legs the final strike by flexing them to the max with the so called isolation exercises. The weight is not important anymore and you should only focus on the contraction.

5 Dumbell Presses

3 Side Laterals

3 Bent over side laterals

3 Front raises

3 Side Laterals (cable)

4 Shrugs

Another very common thing I often do realize, is that bodybuilder with huge shoulders, tend to have a weak chest... So how can it be possible that athletes who seem to be strong in pushing weights have a weak chest? The answer is quite easy. If you start cheating in your chest workouts, the shoulders will automatically start helping to push the weight.

In conclusion I can just recommend to everyone to really focus on doing shoulders on the shoulder day itself and not to allow them to influence your chest training. If you kill them once a week it will be enough to make them grow.

Many times athletes tend to give the most attention to the front of the delts and forget about the backside. Quite often this backside is highly underdeveloped. If you manage this muscle to become a stronger part, your shoulders will automatically look more round and complete as a res

In my earlier years I added another exercise for the backside of my shoulders to every back workout and even now I still try to improve them. Like calves and arms, they can almost never be big enough.