Chin-ups

  Chin-ups, like squats, also work several muscle groups, thereby stimulating significant overall muscle growth. To begin, grasp the chin-up bar with a palmsup grip. (You may require straps to reinforce your grip for the required number of repetitions.) Slowly begin to contract the muscles in your arms, and try to touch the bar to your lower chest when you have reached the apex of your ascent. Hold this contracted position for a two-count, and then lower yourself slowly (four seconds) back to the starting position, all the while making sure that the latissimus dorsi muscles are constantly contracted. Repeat this procedure until at least eight repetitions have been completed.

  If you can’t perform a chin-up on your own, you may either use an assisted chinup machine, if your local gym has one, or do a negative-only set. We’ll discuss negative further in the next chapter, but for now, here’s what to do: Stand on a chair facing the chin-up bar, grab the bar, and step off. Under full muscle control, lower yourself to a stretched position as slowly as you can. Repeat to exhaustion. When you can complete ten negatives, you should be able to perform at least three or four regular chin-ups.

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Standing Dumbbell Curls

  This exercises are to be performed in a superset. First, to perform the standing dumbbell curls, grab a pair of dumbbells and hold them at your sides with the palms touching your upper thighs. Slowly curl both arms up until the dumbbells are at shoulder level.
  Pause briefly in this fully contracted position, and then lower the dumbbells slowly, in four seconds, back to the starting position. Perform your fi rst set as a slow, controlled, warm-up set (supersetted with the next exercise), and then increase the resistance by 20 percent (give or take a couple of pounds, depending on your existing strength levels) and superset your next two sets for 10 repetitions each. Supersetted with lying triceps extensions.

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Lying Triceps Extensions

  Lie on an exercise bench, holding a barbell (or E-Z curl bar) in both hands directly over your chest. From this position, slowly lower the resistance, in four seconds, to a point just behind your head. From this fully extended position, slowly press the resistance back up to the starting position. Just as in the preceding exercise, use your fi rst set as a slow, controlled, warm-up set, and then add approximately 20 percent more to the bar and perform two more sets (supersetted with the previous exercise) of 10 repetitions.

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Presses Behind The Neck

  Use the same form as outlined for the standing barbell press. It’s not necessary to clean the weight here; note the seated starting position in the photo as an alternative technique. Begin with a light poundage in order to warm up your entire shoulder girdle. Take a deep breath before pressing the weight up smoothly to the fully extended position of your arms, and then lower the resistance twice as slowly (four seconds) back to the starting position. Add weight to the bar (approximately 20 percent more than your warm-up weight) and perform two more sets.
 
  You may notice that you will not be as strong in this movement as you were last month. The reason for this isn’t that you’re becoming weaker, but rather that your last four exercises have involved your deltoids to a greater extent, and consequently, your shoulder muscles are more fatigued than they were when you performed this exercise last month. Battle through the fatigue to get your prescribed number of repetitions, all the while maintaining perfect form.

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Upright Barbell Rows

This is an excellent exercise for both your trapezius and deltoid (shoulder) muscles. Place your hands about six inches apart on a barbell with an overhand grip (your palms should be facing your thighs). Keeping your body straight and stationary, slowly pull the weight up to your clavicles (collar bone). Keep the barbell in close, and then slowly, in four seconds, lower it back to the starting position. Remember that your development will be accelerated if you work your muscles in both the upward and downward portions of the exercise. Repeat the movement for three sets of twelve repetitions. Supersetted with bench-pressed.

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Crunches

  This exercise strongly activates your abdominal muscles, which, when fully developed, really set off a well-muscled physique. How your abs appear, or even if they appear at all, is largely due to your dietary habits (an area we will concernourselves with later). This means that no stomach exercise—repeat: no stomach exercise— will “melt” or “burn” or otherwise metamorphose bodyfat from your physique. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that if you perform sit-up after sit-up, you will in some way be ridding your abdomen of surplus adipose; that’s just not the way our species’ physiology functions. Train hard to develop your stomach muscles, and then diet to reduce your subcutaneous bodyfat stores, and your abdominal muscles will stand out in bold relief.

  To perform crunches effectively, lie faceup on the fl oor—on a mat—with your hands behind your head. Try to keep your chin on your chest throughout the movement. Lift your feet up on top of a bench, with your legs slightly apart. From this starting position, slowly curl your trunk upward toward a sitting position. You’ll find that you can accomplish a third of the required sit-up in this fashion, which is fine, because that is all the range of motion that your abdominals require to be stimulated into maximum growth. Once you have ascended to a fully contracted position, hold the position for a two-count, and then lower yourself slowly back to the starting position. Repeat for the required number of repetitions.

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Stiff-legged dead lifts

  This movement is a tremendous overall muscle developer and is also the single most productive exercise for the muscles of the lower back, referred to as the erector spinae muscles, which, as the name implies, act to keep the spine erect.
  To perform the movement properly, stand erect with your feet just under the barbell. Then, by bending your knees, grasp the barbell, with your hands a little wider apart than shoulder width and your knuckles facing front. Now slowly begin to stand erect, straightening your legs as you do so. Keep lifting the resistance until you’re completely erect and the bar is in front of your thighs. Now slowly lower the resistance until it is back on the floor, and repeat the movement for the required number of repetitions. Rest briefly, and then move on to your next exercise. Be sure to draw your shoulders well back at the completion of the movement in order to involve the trapezius muscle, which slopes down from your neck to your upper shoulders.

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Standing Barbell Curls

  This exercise involves the biceps and brachialis muscles of the upper arm. The biceps, on the front of the upper arm, lies on top of the brachialis and is responsible for supinating your wrist to a palms-up position and, in conjunction with the brachialis, fl exes the elbow joint. In essence, this means that these muscles bend the arm, such as when you bring food to your mouth or hold a telephone receiver to your ear.

  To perform the barbell curl, stand erect with a shoulder-width grip on the barbell and your palms facing front. Your arms should be fully extended so that the barbell is directly in front of your thighs. Now slowly lift, or curl, the barbell up to shoulder height, solely using the muscles of the upper arm by bending the elbows. From this fully contracted position, slowly lower the resistance back to the fully extended (or starting) position. Repeat for the required number of repetitions, and then rest briefly before performing your next exercise.

  Remember to let only the upper arms do the work during this movement. Fight the tendency to let additional muscle groups come into play by swinging the body or shrugging the shoulders to add momentum to the movement.

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Bent-Over Barbell Rows

 
  It’s always impressive to see well-developed upper-back muscles that fan out from the waist to the shoulders, giving the body that much soughtafter V shape. One of the best upper-back exercises for developing that V shape is the bent-over barbell row. That’s because the bulk of the stress of the barbell row is appliedto the latissimus dorsi, which is the muscle responsible for the V shape. This is a large, flat muscle whose Latin root means “broad of the back.” Even though the latissimus dorsi, or lat muscles, are situated on the back, they are in effect arm muscles; their action is to draw the arm back behind the midline of the body and downward. In action, their movement resembles that of rowing a boat or climbing a rope. To perform the barbell row, bend at the waist so that your torso is at a right angle (ninety degrees) to your legs. Grab hold of the bar so that your palms are facing your shins. Your hand spacing should be betweentwo and two and a half feet. Slowly pull the bar up toward your torso until it touches your lower chest. From this fully contracted position, slowly lower the resistance back to the starting position (your arms should be fully extended), and repeat for the required number of repetitions. Rest briefly, and then perform your next exercise.

  Remember that the barbell is to touch the floor only when the set is completed. This will ensure that maximum stimulation is imparted to the lats throughout the movement. Also remember to maintain the bent-over position throughout the set.

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Standing Barbell Presses

Whenever the average person asks you, “What can you lift?” chances are the question refers to this exercise. To the uninitiated, the standing barbell press is the touchstone of physical strength, and even experienced trainees place a lot of stock in evaluating one’s strength by the performance of this exercise. Its status as an accurate gauge of individual strength is evidenced by its inclusion as one of the three Olympic lifts used in international competition. The standing barbell press is an excellent deltoid developer. It also stimulates growth in the trapezius and, during its final stages, the triceps muscles. In order to perform this exercise properly, you should clean the barbell to your upper chest, or to the front of your shoulders. Then, slowly press the weight upward until your arms are fully extended over your head. Slowly lower the resistance back down to your shoulders (the starting position), and repeat the procedure for the required number of repetitions. Rest briefly, and then move on to your next exercise.

NOTE: When you’re performing this exercise, there should be no assistance from the legs or excessive arching of the back. Sure, by using these little dodges you can hoist up a few more pounds—but that’s not our objective here. We want the shoulders to receive the bulk of the stress and, consequently, the bulk of the muscle stimulation. 

Note that the bar should be cleaned only once during each set, and that’s at the beginning of the movement.

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Bench Presses

  Because of the number of muscle groups that come into play (triceps, pectorals, deltoids, lats, etc.), the bench press is a great upper-body exercise. The main kinesiological function of the pectorals is to draw the arms into the midline of the body—or, more technically, to adduct the arms—so the action of the arms during the performance of the bench press closely parallels the pectorals’ primary function. The bench press has its shortcomings, as you will learn further on, but for the beginner in search of overall muscle-mass increase, it’s virtually the “perfect” exercise. It is a movement of great poundage potential, and this, combined with the fact that it stimulates a large group of muscles at one time (some more than others), makes it like the squat, a tremendous weight-gaining exercise. To perform the exercise properly, lie on a bench with a barbell at arm’s length over your chest. Slowly lower the bar to your upper chest. Once the bar has touched your chest (I said “touched,” not “bounced”; bouncing a weight accomplishes nothing but injury), slowly press it back up to the top position, and repeat the procedure for the required number of repetitions. Put the weight down, rest briefly, and then perform your next exercise.

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Pull-overs

 
  There’s a twofold manner to developing a massive chest: one way is to develop the pectorals with exercises that build those muscles, and the other is to expand the rib cage with stretching exercises. Thus, performing both of these types of movements enlarges the chest’s external musculature as well as its internal underpinnings. Performance of the straight-arm pullover is simple. Lie on a bench with a light barbell (or a centrally loaded dumbbell), held at arm’s length over your chest. Maintaining the arm’s-length position, slowly lower the weight until it almost touches the fl oor behind you. Make an effort to keep your arms locked throughout the movement, and when you inhale, attempt to draw in as much oxygen as you can while lifting the weight as high as possible. The weight is not a major factor in this exercise, whereas the degree of stretch most certainly is. A weight range of between ten and twenty pounds is recommended, dependent on your starting level of strength.

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Barbell squats

  Without question, squats are the top-ranked result-producing bodybuilding exercise. If you want to pack on pounds of solid muscle weight all over your physique, then give your all to squatting properly. And certainly this is the most effective leg building exercise that one can undertake with weights. 

To perform the squat properly, stand erect with a barbell across your shoulders and take a deep breath. Now, with your lungs full, bend your knees and lower your body until you are in a full squat position; you should be slightly below a ninety degree angle to your shins. As soon as you reach the bottom position, rise immediately— but under control—while at the same time expelling the air from your lungs, so that you will be ready for another intake of oxygen at the completion of the movement. Breathe in, and down you go for your second repetition, and so on until the required number of repetitions have been completed. It is important to keep your head up at all times, and your chest should be held high. Some bodybuilders accomplish this by fixing their gaze on a spot two to three feet above eye level until the movement is fi nished. Also, some trainees prefer to perform squats with a small board under their heels to improve their balance. If you feel your balance is off somewhat, which it may be, owing to innate variations in bone structure, by all means utilize a board. Squats strongly affect the quadriceps, the fourheaded muscle that makes up the bulk of the frontal thigh, the main action of which is to straighten the leg and to flex the hip. 

  

  As soon as you have completed your set of squats, you will immediately pick up a barbell and perform your second exercise, pull-overs. This immediate transfer from one exercise to another is known in bodybuilding circles as a “superset,” and you will be using it only for the fi rst two exercises. Then you can take a sixty- to ninety-second breather.

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