Arnold Schwarzenegger 7x Mr Olympia

You can’t build a massive chest with shoddy technique and bad form. Avoiding these five common training blunders will guarantee “pec-tacular” gains

LIFTING YOUR BUTT OFF THE BENCH

While you might see some big benchers raise their hips off the bench, it’s not a practice you should try. Raising your hips off the bench in an attempt to lift more weight invites injury while turning the move into more of a decline press (during which you’re stronger and the range of motion is shorter). While that may be advantageous for guys who bench for record weights, as a bodybuilder you could simply do declines instead if you want to focus on your lower pecs. To keep the stress on the middle pecs, keep your hips glued to the bench. You can still drive through your feet, but keep your hips and glutes down

NOT WRAPPING YOUR THUMBS AROUND THE BAR

Here’s one of those mistakes you make because you get comfortable doing a movement in a particular way, and then it just feels right to do it that way — even when it’s not. Using a thumbless grip (thumbs wrapped around the bar on the same side as the fingers) won’t be a problem 99% of the time, but it’s that 1% that can kill you. With a heavy weight, the bar can slip from your grip and come crashing down, exactly as it did to USC tailback Stafon Johnson a few years ago and almost ended his football career. Get in the habit of wrapping those thumbs around the bar

LOWERING THE BAR INCORRECTLY

Whether you’re doing incline or decline presses, the point at which the bar comes closest to your pecs changes with the angle of the bench. With declines, the bar should tap your lower pecs — not your neck — and with inclines it should come down high on the chest. The reason is all about leverage and being in the position to push the most weight safely. Of course, you don’t want to compound one mistake by making another: bouncing the bar off your pecs in an effort to generate momentum to help lift the weight

ALWAYS FOCUSING ON BENCH PRESSES FIRST

The bench press is a clear winner as a mass-building chest move, and some of its cousins are also great, including the flat bench with dumbbells and benching from the incline and decline positions. But your energy levels at the gym are like a balloon with a small leak, declining over the course of your workout as fatigue sets in. If you’re always doing inclines after flat benching, your upper pecs are going to start to lag behind, and if you always do declines third in your routine, your lower pecs will never be challenged to their fullest. Instead, on occasion do inclines or declines first in your workout when you’re fresh and can tackle some weights never before pressed. Building a muscle to its fullest potential means breaking out of routines, and always doing bench presses first is one routine you don’t want to settle into

PRESSING YOUR FLYES

Who doesn’t want to go as heavy as possible on chest day? But if you go heavy on your flyes, you’re far more likely to press them (a multijoint move) rather than lock the slight bend in your elbows, which is required for single-joint exercises like flyes. Maintaining the slightly bent arm position better isolates the chest, reducing the contribution from the delts and triceps. Because you have to back off on the weights, they’re best done at the end of your workout. Watch the motion in the mirror carefully; the degree of bend shouldn’t change during the rep. If you have trouble doing this, do your single-joint moves on the pec-deck machine instead, which does a better job of locking your arms in position

Arnold Schwarzenegger Shares His Best Shoulder-Training Tips

Bringing out the shape and striations of the shoulder muscles is a big part of upper-body training, but first you need to make sure you have sufficient delt muscle mass. Here are three tips for adding massive size to the shoulders.

Go Heavy

Working in the 8-12-rep range is generally the best way to add muscle mass to most bodyparts (the one exception being legs, which respond better to slightly higher reps). But I firmly believe that muscles, especially the deltoids, also need to be subjected to very heavy weight to grow to their potential - a weight at which you can do only 5-6 reps. Go ahead and do lateral raises in the 8-12 range (even 15-20), but I suggest doing overhead presses in the 5-6-rep range at least every other workout. It's not that every set of presses has to be heavy; if you're doing, say, 4-5 sets of seated barbell presses, you can do your first set or two for eight reps, but then make your last 2-3 sets heavier.

Get Creative With Your Presses

Most people vary their shoulder training only when it comes to lateral raises - they'll do front-, middle- and rear-delt raises with dumbbells and cables, from different angles - but when it comes to presses, they mainly stick to barbells and dumbbells. There are many other versions of overhead presses that you should work into your delt routine, such as the Smith machine overhead press, Arnold press, both in-front-of-the-head and behind-the-neck overhead presses (using a barbell or a Smith machine) and standing overhead barbell or dumbbell presses (military press).

Utilize Rest-Pauses on Presses

As intensity techniques go, I think drop sets and supersets are great when doing front-, middle- and rear-delt raises. On overhead presses, however, my favorite technique is the rest-pause. The reason behind this is with rest-pauses, you never have to lighten the load - you start with a heavy weight and stick with it for the whole set. To refresh, here's how to perform rest-pauses: Pick a weight for a Smith machine overhead press with which you can do about six reps. Do a set of 4-5 reps, rest 15-20 seconds, and then do 2-3 more reps with that same weight. Rest another 15-20 seconds, then do another 2-3 reps. At that point, you'll have done 8-11 reps with a weight with which you could normally do only six. These tips will help spark growth in your shoulders, so give them a try next time delt day rolls around. Follow your pressing moves with high-intensity laterals and you'll have the best of both worlds: size and definition.

Shoulder Workout Routine

This workout emphasizes going heavy on your first two exercises, and it's ideal for building massive delts.

Excercise	Sets	Reps
Smith Machine Overhead Press	4	5-6*
Arnold Press	4	10,8,6,6
Barbell Upright Row	3	8-10
Dumbbell Lateral Raise	3	10-12
- superset with -
Dumbbell Bent-Over Lateral Raise	3	10-12

* On your last two sets, perform 2-3 rest-pauses.

The Perfect All-in-One Exercise: the Thruster

What’s your “desert island” exercise? The one you’d rely on for the rest of your life if you could take only one with you? Ask any top trainer, and most will opt for the so-called “King of All Exercises”: the back squat.

The thruster, however, may be the wiser choice. Combining a front squat with an overhead press, thrusters give new meaning to the concept of the compound, multi- joint exercise. Work this move with heavier weight and lower reps for head-to-toe strength and power, or lighten up the load and do higher reps at timed intervals for the best HIIT workout of your life. The following four-step approach will show you how it’s done.

The Move

1. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, your lower back tightly arched, and the barbell in military press position with your hands no wider than the outsides of your shoulders.

2. Keeping your head and chest held high, push your hips back and descend into a below-parallel squat.

3. From the bottom position, explode back to the start position as hard as you can, using your momentum to simultaneously press the bar over your head.

4. Finish in a standing position, with the barbell over and slightly behind your head, then smoothly lower it and descend into another squat in one continuous motion.

It’s rare when it happens but it’s always something of a spectacle to see someone heaving around a quarter-ton of clanking iron on barbell rows. Big weight, bro. More common but in the same realm of performance are the stack-pulling cable rowers grunting through a set to failure, wrist straps and all. Good set. These feats of strength are impressive, to be sure, but strangely, you will find fewer of these alphas strutting their stuff at the pull-up bar.

Pull-ups are an equalizer – no matter how many plates you can row, you’re still likely to encounter some difficulty when pulling your bodyweight through space. Arnold certainly found that to be the case. But instead of being humbled by thepull-up, he attacked it with vigor and built the thick, here-to-there lats that made his waist appear smaller than it already was.

How did he do this, you ask?

Sets To Failure

Arnold was a fan of failure. And with pull-ups – for most of us – failure tends to come quickly. But that doesn’t mean that you have to sacrifice on volume.

Instead of locking himself into a cut-and-dry scheme of 4-5 sets of 8-10 reps, Arnold would instead pick a number – say 50 or 60 – and complete as many sets to failure as it took to reach that number. Usually, this meant starting off with a set of 10-12 quality reps, with the numbers quickly falling off after that. By his last set, it wasn’t uncommon to be trembling through 4-5 reps. But that didn’t matter. What did matter was that he put in the work it took to get his lats growing.

Anecdotally, lifters who commit to doing pull-ups regularly report quick gains in strength and stamina on the bar – more sets with more quality reps.

So take your own Arnold-like approach to pull-ups and watch your lats expand in no time flat. And it won’t hurt on your seismic sets of rows, either.

Exercise Sets/Reps

Pull-Up X/50

--Arnold would perform as many sets to failure as necessary to reach 50 reps. He would rest 1-2 minutes between sets.

For more on Arnold’s unique approach to training, pick up the October issue of M&F, on newsstands now.

Wider Grip, Wider Lats?

Arnold famously suggested this in his prime and, with the way his back looked, no one was going to argue with him. And while it’s true that his wide-grip pull-ups – which he did behind-the-neck as well – targeted the upper, outer lats, you can further activate the lats with a slightly narrower grip because it increases the range of motion on those muscles

Last month you got a taste of the power bodybuilding world with my chest workout. to check it out.) Now, it’s time to smash your back with the same kind of weight and volume. The basic principles of the two workouts are identical—start with a main lift where you go as heavy as possible for your working sets, taking as much time as you need between sets to fully recover.

The accessory moves that follow are also heavy, but never at the expense of good form. You don’t have to time your rest periods during the accessory moves, either, but you should aim to pick up the pace somewhat; you won’t need as much recovery time as you will during the deadlift. Over the years, I’ve learned to listen to my body and attack the sets as soon as I’m ready.

Keep Strength Levels High

Remember: Power bodybuilding is not just a system to build strength. It’s also the best way I know to retain strength while dieting to get lean. Keeping strength levels high should be a priority for everyone, because when you lose strength, you lose size. And if you diet hard only to be left with a body without muscle, what was the point? If you can stay strong year-round, you can stay big year round, no matter how hard you diet when you’re trying to get lean. Strength sustains you.

Back Blasting Workout

How to Do It: Go as heavy as you can. My weights are show in the far column.

Exercise	Sets	Reps	Mike's Weight
*Pullup	4	12	N/A
*Deadlift	4	8	135, 225, 315, 405
**Deadlift	8	5, 4, 3	495, 585, 650
***Deadlift	7	3	705
Lat Pulldown	4	10	Full Stack
Seated Row	4	12	Full Stack
T-bar Row	4	8	360
Hyperextension	6	15	45

*as warmup, **Ramp up, ***Working sets

Johnnie Jackson is a true hybrid. Lots of guys claim to be bodybuilders and powerlifters, but no one’s had more success at the former while excelling at the latter than JJ. During his 12-year pro bodybuilding career, this 42-year-old Gulf War veteran has perpetually fnished near the top. Meanwhile, pursuing his powerlifting “hobby,” he’s a human forklift. in a 2012 competition, he deadlifted 832 raw. Fame and fortune have come via his physique, but Jackson maintains his love for moving major metal. His hybrid back workouts begin with low-rep deadlifts before higher-rep, growth- inducing sets for width and thickness. Thus, Jackson makes sure he’s always as strong as he looks.

Jackson's Back Routine

Exercise	Sets	Reps
Deadlift	4*	6-4
Weighted Pullup	3	20
Barbell Row	3	10
Seated Cable Row	3	10
Pulldown	3	10
Back Extension	3	15

*Preceded by 2 warmup sets, the 2nd heavier than the 1st.

Power Bodybuildling Tip Sheet

Choose one power exercise per workout, such as deadlift, squat, or shoulder press.
Do that exercise first and focus on sets of 6 reps or fewer.
Like Jackson, try following low reps on a powerlift with high reps on the next exercise.
Keep the sets for other exercises mostly in the 8- to 12-rep range to best build muscle.