When eight-time Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman gets asked if would he do anything different, he responds in perfect Ronnie fashion, “I would have trained harder!”
In many ways, Coleman’s workouts were a throwback to an earlier era. He stressed body parts twice weekly and often trained twice daily, and he emphasized free-weight basics. For example, his typical chest exercises were all presses: flat, incline, and decline with a barbell in one workout and with dumbbells in the next. What distinguished him were the numbers he put up for 10 to 12 reps in workout after workout for more than a decade. There were 2,300-pound leg presses, 540-pound T-bar rows, 200-pound incline dumbbell presses, and 700-pound behind-the-back shrugs.
While Ronnie Coleman’s balls-to-the-wall, all-out training isn’t for the faint of heart, the simplistic, yet effective rules that he followed will stand the test of time.
Here are ten pieces of training advice, straight from the King himself.
Some of my best chest development came from heavy dumbbell presses of every kind: flat, incline, decline, superset and giant set. For total chest development, you need a variety of movements, angles, and stresses from free weights, machines and cables, but mass is best maximized by means of a barbell and dumbbells. In the chest, the right and left pec complexes must be fatigued independently of each other, yet equally. That’s where dumbbell presses come in. One pec cannot help the other lift its weight. They’re on their own, but being on this doesn’t mean they can act on their own. They’re a balanced team, and if they don’t perform as such, you won’t be able to press either of the dumbbells or, worse, you’ll lose balance and tear a muscle.
My three most hallowed training principles are: (1) to use the most weight possible; (2) with the most correct form; and (3) through a full range of motion. Nothing comes closer to satisfying all of these criteria than dumbbell presses.
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Kevin Horton
You Can’t Just Shrug Your Way to Great Traps
Traps are the most neglected muscle group—not because they’re ignored, but because they’re so difficult to reach. Shrugs just don’t cut it. This is because, in some ways, traps are the most remote and inaccessible muscle group in your body. They are protected by a virtual fortress of other torso muscle groups, such as lats, rhomboids, erectors, and shoulders, and even by such distant arm muscles as biceps, triceps, forearms and hands.
So, before your traps can be worked, the exercise must pass through several of these ancillary muscles, each of which saps it of some of its power. By the time it reaches the traps, it has been rendered essentially ineffective. That means your traps must be worked through all dimensions, not only with shrugs, but also by extremely heavy lift-pulls through a backward-upward, or upward-backward arc.
If you want great traps, be sure to include the following exercises regularly: Deadlifts, Barbell Rows, T-Bar Rows, Seated Low-Pulley Rows, Power Cleans, and Upright Rows.
3 of 10
Chris Lund
Get Lean and Stay Strong
Contrary to popular misconception, getting your bodyfat as low as possible, and your muscles as big as possible, are not incompatible. Prevailing myths hold that “as you lose weight, you lose a lot of strength” and “higher reps burn more calories,” but I think those are cop-outs by low achievers who use contest prep or leaning out as a vacation. To me, it’s just the opposite. By reducing your bodyfat, you increase your body’s muscle-to-fat ratio. Since you then have more muscle relative to the weight you’re lugging around all day, you will have more endurance, intensity and comparative strength. Continue training with your heaviest weights, and you’ll burn more calories than if you use lighter weights and higher reps.
Unfortunately, many bodybuilders are in worse condition—small, wan, drawn and exhausted—before a contest than when they’re not competing, all because they back off from everything that made them massive and cut in the first place, namely, power-packed food and heavy intense training. Don’t reduce the muscle-building nutrients in your diet. Maintain or increase your protein intake, and find the calorie level that supplies you with enough energy to sustain your customarily furious workouts, while allowing you to gradually burn excess bodyfat without burning muscle.
4 of 10
Chris Lund
Don’t Forget the Rear View
When a muscle group is lagging, it means the muscle group is not being trained hard enough, heavy enough, or correctly. With rear delts, especially, that’s a major problem. No muscle group is as resistant to isolation, or as limited in range of motion, or as difficult to hit with enough weight, all of which combine to prevent it from growing at an equal pace with other muscles. However, that is no excuse for not developing world-class rear delts. Here’s how I get it done. I mentally separate my rear delts from all other muscle groups, as though they are the only bodypart I have, unconnected to my lats, traps or medial delts. I then run through a rep in my mind, imagining how my rear delts will contract to move the weight, and I realize that—since they cannot be pulled by my shoulder blades—they must rotate clockwise, or inward, around their vertical axes. For the extension, the movement is reversed, so that they can rotate counterclockwise, or outward. This allows me to focus 100 percent of my energy into my rear delts alone, so that at no time do I pull back with my shoulder blades or lift with my traps.
Try prioritizing your rear delts in your shoulder workouts by adding seated dumbbell side laterals with your chest braced against an incline bench, and seated dumbbell presses, with your back braced against an upright pad. Do four sets of each, 10 to 12 reps per set. Before you know it, you’ll have new boulders hanging off the back of your shoulders.
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Chris Lund
Dumbbells for Triceps
In every triceps workout, I include one to three dumbbell exercises, their unique benefit being that you can isolate the three individual heads of the triceps to a degree unmatched by a straight bar or cables. A straight bar is best for overall mass, and cables maximize isolation, but dumbbells combine versatility for isolation and the natural gravity forces of free weights for mass.
My rule of thumb for triceps workouts is to use four exercises: two with my elbows overhead (seated French curls and behind-the-neck extensions) and two to the front or downward (close-grip benches, lying French curls, dips, pushdowns or dumbbell pressbacks). The sequence of these movements is always random. I’m not wedded to the heavy-first, definition-later philosophy. Sometimes I start with a deep-burning isolation exercise, such as one-arm dumbbell extensions, and end with close-grip benches or dips; at other times, it will be just the opposite. What matters is building a severe burn with my first exercise, then keeping it going through the others.
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Kevin Horton / M+F Magazine
The Winning Formula
Time is an important factor in every aspect, from repetitions to workout intervals, but adhering to a specific time frame in your training should never be foremost in your mind. Length of rest periods, sets, exercises, or workouts are always associated with intensity (how much effort you put into your training), and time and intensity are inversely related. The harder you train, the faster you fatigue the muscle and the shorter your workout should be. Conversely, the less intensely you train, the longer it takes to fatigue the muscle.
There’s one more variable in the equation: proper execution of the exercise to get at the target muscle. Some bodyparts, such as biceps, triceps and shoulders, can be quickly fatigued with very few sets, as contrasted with back, chest and quads, which are larger, more complex and more remote from the weight. In the latter cases, more sets or exercises may be needed. Do not, however, use that as an excuse to substitute longer and easier training. Always push yourself to reach fatigue quicker by increasing the weights and intensity. Most important, focus on the muscle. Time and intensity are the factors that balance the equation, but the entire equation is meaningless without focus. Make sure the target muscle is the one that reaches fatigue first, rather than the ancillary muscles.
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Chris Lund / M+F Magazine
Chase the Pump
I’m aware of all the talk about my 200-pound curls and my 800-pound squats and deadlifts, but those are only temporary numbers. The weights increase as my muscle mass increases; they don’t precede it. Heavy weight, perfect form and optimal pump are all equal parts of the same equation. One is not more important than the other. It usually takes me 12 reps to build an optimal pump, one that fills the muscle to its max with blood, while leaving it eager to vigorously repeat that sensation with two or three more sets. Notice that I have not mentioned poundage. The amount I lift for any given exercise is not my concern. The weights increase only as a function of the pump I’m getting.
The trick is not to sacrifice weight or reps for each other. They both need to be considered to achieve an optimal pump. You need to test the limits of both to find the ideal combination of weight and reps for any given exercise and set. For the first set, use as much weight as possible for 12 reps, concentrating on building an optimal pump in the muscle. For the next set, add more weight and see if the higher weight/fewer reps strategy builds an even better pump. Continue adding weight and decreasing reps for each set for as long as your pump improves. The tighter the pump, the more your body will grow, so keep it going. Who knows where it will stop?
8 of 10
Chris Lund
Build a Set of Super Quads
Squats are ideal for supersets. No other position permits such a quick and easy transition from one exercise to another. Not that you have to use squats every time you superset legs. Others are just as effective, particularly for specializing. If it’s front quads you want to target, combine extensions with hacks or front squats; if you want to hit your medialis and lateralis, pair leg presses with squats or hacks. Use your imagination, and take it from there. Many bodybuilders advocate supersetting antagonistic muscle groups, such as quads and hamstrings, but that nullifies a sustained pump. If you want to pump and burn your quads, superset two quad exercises; if you want to pump and burn your hamstrings, superset two hamstring exercises. Fortunately, all quad exercises are excellent superset partners with each other. Squats, leg presses, front squats, hack squats, sissy squats, leg extensions—all except my parking-lot lunges—permit easy transitions between each other while also allowing heavy powerful pump-building reps.
My most dramatic leg growth came during a period when I performed supersets every other workout, and not necessarily with squats as the heavier of the two exercises. You’ll need to develop pro-level cardio efficiency and dig even deeper into your endurance reserves in order to get the most out of superset training. This is not for wimps.
9 of 10
Chris Lund
Press Your Way to Massive Delts
The military press is the purest, most basic shoulder exercise possible. Only military presses provide the compound distribution of stresses necessary for overall shoulder width and thickness. Pressing with a bar in front keeps your shoulders wide and requires the muscle groups of both deltoids to contract in a compound manner, along with your upper back, traps, and upper pecs. During behind-the-neck presses, for example, the bar is firmly stabilized by both your shoulders and back. For military presses, however, your shoulder girdle alone is responsible for stability. The result is a more sustained contraction in your lateral and posterior deltoid heads. In short, no muscle in your entire shoulder girdle escapes stress—and development—from a military press.
I suggest that you perform military presses seated with your back braced, then freestanding, in alternate workouts. The former allows you to isolate more power into your shoulders, and the latter builds more total-body strength by requiring every muscle in your body—especially your torso and shoulders combined—to stabilize that heavy bar. It also sends you home with the satisfaction that you’ve weathered a great battle.
10 of 10
Chris Lund
The Ideal Number of Reps
Bodybuilding is about quality, not quantity. I don’t tackle a workout obsessed with being able to lift a specific number of pounds for a specific number of repetitions. My goal is to lift whatever weight it takes, for however many reps and sets it takes, to feel a good full pump in the muscle being worked. Finding that ideal compromise of weight and repetitions for the optimum pump is a task that cannot be taken casually. It demands extensive experimentation. The 10-rep rule of thumb is only a starting point—it might be far from ideal for your body. Maybe the ideal is six, three or 15, but if you don’t have a good pump after 15 reps, the weight is too light or you’re cheating too much. If you reach failure at three or six reps without building a pump, the weight is too heavy or you’re not focusing on the muscle. You will probably find that the number of reps for building an ideal pump varies with each muscle group, according to the adjustments your body needs to make for balance and strength.
Start with a weight that builds a good pump in 12 reps, then concentrate harder to see if you can get an even better pump in 15 reps at the same weight. Progressively increase the weight in an attempt to build the same or better pump with fewer reps. If you begin to lose the pump, you’ve gone too far; stay at your best pump combination until your strength signals that you’re ready to increase the weight.
