CHAPTER 47

Shock it to Them

“Having competed 10 times as an amateur and four times as an IFBB pro, I have learned a lot. I have also trained plenty of other people for competition and one thing remains constant: different things work for different people.”

– Brian Chamberlain, IFBB pro

The body’s ability to adapt to new situations is beneficial from a bodybuilding perspective. As we increase the load (weight) on a muscle, our body responds by increasing the size of that muscle. But a point comes when increasing the weight no longer has the desired effect. Especially if you work out at the same time of the day, using the same exercises for the same number of sets and the same number of reps – even if the weight has increased. When movements become predictable for the body, it ceases growing. The dreaded training plateau or sticking point has arrived. Your next step should be obvious – you need to shock your body and wake it up!

When it comes to shocking your muscles, nothing beats variety. Predictability put you into this situation in the first place, and unpredictability will shock you out of it. One of the simplest (if your daily schedule permits) ways to shock your body is to change your workout time. If it’s used to training at 5 p.m. every workout day, try training at 7 a.m. or 8 p.m. Another relatively easy shocking technique is to vary your set-and-rep numbers. For example, if you normally do 3 sets of 12 reps, surprise your body by doing 5 sets of 15 reps. If you always start your chest workouts with flat barbell presses, try incline dumbell presses as your first exercise. Or how about ditching ALL your exercises for a few weeks and substituting them with a whole new set, complete with all new exercises and routines. By changing your exercises you keep your body guessing, and the outcome is bound to be new gains in strength and size.

Photo of Mike Ergas by Robert Reiff

You can also alternate the order of exercise execution. If you normally train chest first (and what bodybuilder doesn’t like to do barbell bench presses first?) try beginning your workout with back. Of course you’d be wise not to work arms or shoulders before chest or back, as tiring these smaller muscles will only inhibit your workout’s effectiveness and safety.

Don’t forget what you learned earlier in the book. Incorporating some advanced training techniques into your training is a fantastic way to shock the body into new growth. Throw in a few strip sets, supersets, or forced reps to shock those slumbering muscles!

A few bodybuilders carry the shocking principle to the extreme and perform a different workout every day. I don’t recommend this because, believe it or not, the body can actually adapt to variety (although this sounds like a contradiction, it does happen.) Furthermore, you need a certain amount of regularity in your workouts to gain muscular strength and size. By continuously changing the exercises you’ll limit your progression. The shocking principle, like most techniques outlined in this book, is a valuable tool that should be used, not abused. The key to shocking lies in its novelty.

MUSCLE PRIORITY

As the years progress, you’ll discover that some muscles grow faster than others. Your thighs might be columns of power, but your upper body might be mediocre. Your biceps may rival Ronnie Coleman’s, but your triceps wouldn’t even make the state-level championship. While genetics is sometimes to blame, your training order is the likelier culprit. It’s safe to declare that most bodybuilders train their favorite muscles early in their workout and leave their least favorites until the end. It’s also safe to say that the weak muscles tend to be trained last. The three best examples of this are thighs/hamstrings, chest/back and biceps/triceps.

Virtually everyone will start their leg workouts with quads and then proceed to hamstrings. This makes sense early in your training career because your quads are the bigger muscle and will require the most energy to train. But as soon as your quads start overshadowing your hamstrings, you should switch things around. Train your hamstrings first when you have the most energy. Don’t worry if you can’t go as heavy on your quad exercises after training your hams; maintaining existing muscle size is much easier than building it in the first place.

We see the same problem with chest and back training. Most bodybuilders who train these two muscles during the same workout always start with chest – and usually with the good ol’ faithful flat barbell bench presses. Something about the bench press just appeals to most bodybuilders. Most of us are determined to join the 300-, 400-, even 500-pound bench-press “clubs.” For this reason we’d never dare waste precious energy on back exercises.

The other reason is simple anatomy. Being located on the front of the body, the chest symbolizes power and masculinity. This is why you’ll often see proud owners hitting a few chest poses in the mirror. The back, however, is extremely hard to see. Unless you set up two mirrors, it’s not really visible in most poses, either. Although a well-developed back will earn you just as many points as a great chest on a bodybuilding stage, most bodybuilders do not give the same amount of training attention to back muscles.

The biceps is another “mirror” muscle. Even young children flex their biceps when they want to show how strong they are. When was the last time someone asked you to flex a triceps? The fact that the triceps is about two-thirds the mass of the upper arm and contributes more to upper-body strength than the biceps is usually forgotten. But most people become consumed with biceps – highly visible and symbolically powerful. Thus, the triceps tend to be neglected.

The problems develop when the muscles you train first in your workout begin to overshadow the rest. Odds are they eventually will. As soon as this begins to happen, you must start prioritizing the weaker muscles. The best way to do this is by shifting them to the beginning of your workout. Instead of starting with quads, do your leg curls and stiff-leg deadlifts first. Similarly, perform your rows and chins before your flat and incline presses. Finally, work the triceps before you train biceps. You don’t need to worry that your favorite muscles will lose their mass. They will stay the same. You are simply giving your weaker muscles a chance to catch up.

SPECIALIZATION

You may also notice that parts of individual muscles may start lagging behind. For example, the lower chest may grow quite easily, but the upper chest may lack thickness. Your back might be wide, but have no depth. Your upper biceps might be full, but your lower biceps may not stretch all the way to the elbow joints. Squatting may have built you a great set of glutes and upper quads, but your outer and lower quads are not full.

Once again genetics might interfere here, but more often than not it’s your training that needs revamping. Earlier in the book I suggested that the bulk of your beginner-level training should be composed of compound exercises. This is because compound exercises work more than one muscle and allow you to lift heavier weights. But one disadvantage to compound movements is that they place most of the tension on the central belly of the muscle. The upper and lower sections of the muscle often receive less stimulation. Over time the ends of the muscles start lagging behind the belly of the muscles in terms of fullness and development. The best way to address this problem is to start adding in isolation exercises – particularly movements that target the weak areas. Bodybuilders use the term specialization. This means giving extra attention to the areas of muscles that are lagging behind. As soon as a weakness is discovered it must be addressed right away because the longer you leave it, the harder it will be to fix later on. If this means eliminating a must-do exercise such as squats or bench presses, so be it. As you progress, your training will evolve from primarily compound exercises to a mixture of compound and isolation. Once you have the basic underlying mass (for most people this will be gained in the first four to five years) your best move is to devote most of your attention to refining your physique and bringing up weak areas.

Here are a few suggestions on how to incorporate specialization into your workouts:

1 Prioritize your weak points by training them first in your workouts. This way you’ll be able to hit them while your energy reserves are highest.

2 If you have the time, split your workouts in two and train your weak muscles on their own. For example, train your upper chest or lower biceps earlier in the day and come back later for your regular workout.

3 To avoid overtraining, do not use a specialized program for more than six to eight weeks. If you start experiencing the symptoms of overtraining, cut back on the specialization.

4 If, after you give it time, a weak area doesn’t respond to “normal” specialization training, try training it six days in a row for two weeks. While this is a radical approach that should not be your first choice, it usually works to shock a weak area.

Certain muscles grow faster than others – for this reason, it’s important to pay attention to your training order.
Photo of Monty Rogers by Robert Reiff