The Ole' Double Whammy!

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Published on Sunday, 31 January 2010 00:00

Written by Steve Colescott, Guerilla Journalist

Weak bodyparts?  No problem.  This "one-two punch" for correcting muscle imbalances is simple and effective!

His eyes glanced away for just a second, and that was all I needed.

I darted through the doorway without a sound, trying to make myself invisible. Instantly adopting the gait and carriage of someone that belonged there, I switched from the condition of sharpened alertness I needed outside the door to a calm, composed state of being. "Blend" - that is the key and, I have to modestly admit, I was a master chameleon.

It was just a few weeks past my twenty-first birthday and I had saved a few measly dollars and made the three-hour drive to Columbus to attend the Arnold Classic. I was sleeping on the floor of my cousin Gary's apartment, which saved me some cash, and managed to put enough together for a nose-bleed seat for the evening show.

The $350 VIP seats were as far from my grasp as a brand new Ferrari but what I lacked in wealth, I knew I could make up for in stealth. I had thoroughly enjoyed the contest. Watching my boyhood heroes through binoculars would fuel my training to new levels for months. The post-contest VIP buffet was a chance to mingle with them in person. I couldn't let the fact that I didn't have a ticket stand in the way.

Four steps into the room, and I knew I made it cleanly past the doorman. I knew not to glance back - an amateur mistake and dead giveaway - and didn't really need to because I could not feel his eyes on me. He assumed that anyone that entered so boldly belonged there and his fleeting attention to me was replaced by the needs of the surging group of legitimate ticket-holders anxious to get inside.

Another member of the security staff was positioned a few yards inside the entrance and his broader view of things left me exposed. I casually pivoted to my left, only seeing his movement in my peripheral vision and headed towards a line of people. I could feel him rushing toward me and a very public and embarrassing exodus seemed like it may be looming in my near future.

About twelve feet away, a white-haired, mustached figure stood in line wearing a grey pinstripe suit oddly mismatched with white tennis shoes. Despite the stress of my immediate predicament, I was taken aback. For the past ten years, a week had not gone by in which I have not seen this man's image in my constant reading and re-reading of issues of Flex and Muscle & Fitness. Joe Weider, the self-proclaimed "Trainer of Champions" and the father of modern bodybuilding, stood before me.  If you had told me that in less than ten years, this man would offer me a job writing for him, I would have laughed.  Out of place in the crowd, and exuding a special type of loneliness that only the wealthy seem to experience, I could not believe first that Joe Weider was standing before me and, more so, that he was standing in line for something at a bodybuilding event. After all, who would not expect, or insist upon, the Master Blaster cutting directly to the front of the line?

"Joeee!" I called out, my tightly flattened palm stretched out to the sleepy-eyed icon in true job interview fashion. "How the hell are ya'?" Weider stepped forth, his wide smile mimicking my own, no doubt puzzled at my identity, but not wanting to insult a possible acquaintance. As I locked Joe into a handshake, the speeding security guard veered away from me like an outfielder running for a pop fly only to realize at the last minute that the ball was smeared in cow dung. I leaned in close to Joe, asked how Betty was getting along, and told him I really appreciated the recent all-dumbbell training article. I hadn't actually read one, but I knew with the constant article rehash cycle that there had most likely been one in the past few months in one of his magazines. He graciously thanked me and made an excuse to move on. Works for me!

Emboldened by my successful entry, and wanting to share the wealth, I grabbed some food and casually made my way to a side exit. I cracked open the door and called to my two new friends in the hallway. These guys were both thickly built powerlifters from New York. I had shared my binoculars with them earlier that evening up in the balcony seats. They were good guys and I felt they deserved the VIP treatment as much as anyone.

As the three of us walked through the crowd, competitors were gradually filtering into the room. Autograph hounds mobbed the bodybuilders that had placed well, or were currently popular in the magazines. One not-so well-known competitor shuffled sourly through the crowd looking as if someone had peed in his favorite gym bag. Tall and wide-shouldered, this new pro obviously came to Columbus dreaming that, while he would certainly not be a dominant force among the established pros, he would at least place well, establishing himself as a contender and a threat in future shows. As it turned out, he shared the last-place position with a handful of other (currently soul-searching) competitors. The adjustment from top amateur to competing professional is historically cruel to all but a rare few.

Common sense should have told me to leave him alone. The unthinking mentality of a young fan however, over-ruled logic. "You looked good out there," I said, lying.

"Oh yeah?" he replied, stopping in his tracks and shifting his weight back onto one leg. "I was freakin' robbed!"

Powerlifters are a unique breed. The raw honesty of challenging themselves to limit weights leaves no room for bullshit. Your best lift is the lift you've done in a meet, approved by judges and a matter of public record. There is no variance. Romantic wishes and unfulfilled dreams have no place in their ironclad reality.

My new friend Jim, a short fireplug that lifts in the 242-pound class, jumped in and, in his thick East Coast accent said, "Maybe you shouldn't bitch until you put some respectable meat on those legs of yours."

Tony jumped in immediately. "Yeah, if I were you, I'd head home, go to the squat rack and pitch a tent!" Brutal. For a brief moment, I wondered if things were going to escalate into an ugly melee but the physique-man, having so recently been emotionally beaten, was in no mood to risk a physical beating, and my two powerlifting friends, although each smaller than him, looked at though they could collectively deliver some punishment.

The bodybuilder quickly disappeared both from the VIP banquet and (eventually) from the professional bodybuilding ranks. The unsolicited squat rack advice was apparently never followed. Had he addressed his proportion problems early in his career, he may have grinded out a decent living as a pro. Instead, he chose to remain oblivious to his weaknesses and never address what was so obvious to the audience and the judges.

Identify the Problem

As athletes, whether you are a bodybuilder, powerlifter or just a non-competing lifter, you are only as strong as your weakest link. Addressing these limitations is essential to your continued progress.

If you think you have the ability to honestly and critically evaluate your physique, you may already know which areas need your concentration. If not, turn to an experienced lifter for advice. Possible options include your training partner, the owner or manager of the gym you train at, or anybody you know that has competed. Even if they are someone you've never spoken to before, if you approach them respectfully, they will almost certainly be honored that you are asking for their expertise.

If neither of the above options seems workable, have a variety of photos taken in both relaxed stances and flexed poses. Photos can provide you with an external perspective on the current state of your physique as well as chronicling your improvements (or lack thereof) over time. A camcorder can also serve as a great video record of your condition.

Once you've chosen your method of assessing your physique, look for the following things:

1. Strong point or bodyparts
2. Weak points
3. Length of your muscle bellies (particularly in your weak bodyparts)
4. Relative balance between the left and right sides of your body.
5. Balance between your upper and lower body (are you top-heavy?).
6. V-taper from shoulders to waist,
7. Taper from muscles to joints (i.e., from your legs to your knees).

After you've made of record of these observations, a clear pattern should have developed, showing exactly what areas you need to target for improvement. An honest assessment like this can be a sobering experience but it is the first step in designing a physique-balancing plan. The second step is to rethink some of your longstanding views on how you structure your workouts and how recuperation plays into things. After all, your current training style is what led to the imbalances we intend to correct.

Recuperation Myths

Beginning lifters often look for physical cues about the effectiveness of their training programs. The most obvious physical cue - and one that is impossible to ignore - is the deep delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) that trails two to three days behind those initial workouts. We all remember the "run over by a truck" feeling we got from our earliest workouts, or those after a long layoff.

Your first response when experiencing this may be, "I can't work chest again! My pecs ache from sternum to deltoid. I could barely lift my arm to button my shirt." The truth is, working your pecs is exactly what you should do. A couple of fairly high-rep sets followed by some stretching, will flood the area with blood, drastically speeding recuperation and reducing soreness. If done correctly, these follow-up sets will not only assist with recuperation, but will stimulate a secondary burst of growth.

Recuperation is not primarily bodypart-specific. Most of your recuperation takes place shortly after the training session, with much of the replenishment of glycogen and the removal of waste products taking mere minutes (otherwise the burn of lactic acid would continue hours after training). Super-compensation, the adaptive rebuilding of muscle fibers is mostly completed in 24-36 hours for well-conditioned athletes.

The limiting factor is the nervous system's ability to handle the stress of training which is based on your level of general physical preparedness (GPP), how much rest you receive outside the gym, and the speed in which you replenish vital nutrients (based on how well you eat). This can be improved by consuming adequate amounts of quality proteins and the nutrients that make up a generally healthy diet.

With rest and nutrition in place, and GPP at a high level, a lifter can handle more workouts for a particular bodypart (such as a weak point). One must only be concerned that those workouts are not too high in volume and that nutrition, rest and outside stresses are controlled to avoid overtraining. The "Double Whammy" program addresses all of these concerns while allowing you to increase growth stimulus to weak bodyparts.

This program calls for two separate workouts for the bodyparts that you are targeting for improvement.  The idea of doing this first came to my attention a little over a decade ago. I had a program designed for me by a champion bodybuilder and trainer named Rory Leidelmeyer. Leidelmeyer was a true "think outside the rack" trainer and gave me some original ideas about getting the most from my training. He was a strong advocate of more frequent training for weak points.

Your primary workout will be fairly high in volume, hitting the muscle group from a variety of angles and incorporating more than one rep range/poundage scheme. This should be the most important workout in your rotation.

The secondary workout is called a feeder workout and falls two days after your primary workout. The feeder workout is low in volume. After an initial warm-up set or two with moderately high reps (not taken to failure), you commence your work sets. This will involve a single all out rest-pause set. An ideal rest-pause set would involve completing a moderately high-rep (8-12) set taken to failure, followed by a short break (just long enough for you to take three to four slow, deep breaths), and immediately continuing on to failure a second time (you should get somewhere around four to six reps, depending on the level of muscular endurance and the muscle fiber composition of the particular bodypart). At this point, take another short pause before going for one to four more (as many as you can get) reps. This will not only provide a nutrient-rich flush of fresh blood but will provide maximal muscle cell activation in minimum time.

When trying to improve a week bodypart, don't let the traditional calendar week control your training schedule. For most beginning and intermediate level lifters, a two-days on, one-day off schedule is ideal (as long as their workouts are kept under an hour and fifteen minutes and they are eating and sleeping well). Advanced lifters (over two years of consistent hard training) can get away with six-days a week training (ninety-minutes or less per session) for part of the year but would do well for some lower-frequency mass building for at least a third of the year.

Let us take the example of a typical training split done by an advanced National-level lifter. In this particular case, the lifter has advanced to the point in which he splits the body into six separate "bodypart-based" workouts, with one day off a week.  Each bodypart is worked once weekly. They have progressed to the point in which they require a large volume of work (18-22 sets) per bodypart. At the advanced level, this type of split is very common. As you can see in a 28-day period, there are only four chest workouts (and therefore only four instances of growth stimulation). It is assumed that those following this type of protocol believe that the high amount of volume possible with this type of training makes up for the seven-day period between workouts. Look at the "Traditional -Advanced" example in the accompanying graph.

As you can see, in the Traditional -Advanced workout, pecs (the weak bodypart in this example) is only trained four times in a 28-day period. The only possible adjustment for a weak bodypart might be to simply direct more effort to the area (which is rarely effective) or to even further increase the volume (already probably high enough). There are also only four rest days on that four-week period, making overtraining a possible risk.

The "Traditional -Beginner / Intermediate" workout looks better, with twice as many opportunities for growth stimulation and three times as many rest days. Unfortunately, trying to train three major bodyparts in one workout leaves little energy or time for specialization training.

"Double-Whammy" workouts offers more frequent opportunities for growth (two in five days) compared to the one or two growth opportunities every seven days offered in traditional programs. This means that you will not be able to follow a strict weekly calendar (i.e., leg training every Saturday) but if you're serious about improving a weak bodypart, that is a small sacrifice.

Eight Important Points to Consider While Structuring the Workouts

1)      Increase in frequency of training for weak bodypart.

A great deal has been written about overtraining and the importance of allowing for adequate recuperation in order to maximize progress from training. What most people neglect to understand is that overtraining is largely systemic in nature. In other words, it is not your back or quads that are overtrained - it is your body that is overtrained from a back or leg workout for which it wasn't ready. Overtraining is a state in which (among other things) the nervous system and the body's waste removal/ nutrient replenishment systems are unable to keep up with the demands of your training.

2)      Decrease in training volume for other bodyparts.

A temporary decrease of 15-20% below the volume of training that your body has become accustomed to will free up resources which can be directed towards your weak bodypart. Ideally, you should complete all of your other training sessions feeling as if you want to, and are capable of, doing more. You should be literally "chomping at the bit" to push it hard once it is time to begin your specialization workout.

It is unlikely that you will suffer a noticeable loss in other bodyparts during this period and, if you do, it should quickly correct itself once you have reincorporated a more balanced routine.

3)      Plan to train your weak parts when you are fresh.

It is simple and it makes sense. Start each rotation of your weekly training cycle (right after a rest day) with your specialization workout. If possible, even take your second rest day of the week after your specialization day. When possible, train the weak bodypart at the beginning of your workout sessions (the only exception to this might be arm training).

4)      Emphasis on "feel" over poundage.

The most common mistake made when trying to improve a weak bodypart is trying to train too heavy. Trying to push big weights with a bodypart that you probably already do not have good "neuromuscular communication" with will only cause you to recruit other bodyparts to help you cheat the weights up. The more you can feel the exercise in the targeted area, the better. Useful techniques to get the most out of the weights may include 1) holding and squeezing hard at the contracted part of the exercise (i.e., seated rows, leg extensions), 2) emphasizing the stretch on each rep (dumbbell flyes, chins), or 3) non-locking reps (leg presses, shoulder presses).

5)      Focus on increasing poundages.

No, this is NOT a contradiction to Point #4. Proper form and an emphasis on "feel" of the movement is your primary consideration but you also want to be push heavier poundages by the end of the specialization phase. It should be your primary goal to at least perform an extra rep or two during each of your specialization workouts without any degradation of your lifting form. If you followed Point #2 and adequately reduced volume for your other bodyparts, this shouldn't be difficult to accomplish.

6)      Manipulate "range-of-motion" to your advantage.

Become aware of the interplay of various muscle groups in a movement. For instance, when performing most pressing movements for the chest, the pectorals are prime movers at the bottom half of the range-of-motion. As the weight approaches lockout, the triceps become more dominant. If pecs are your weak point, your triceps may already tend to take over too much of the work. A shorter range of motion, emphasizing the bottom of the movement could be the answer.

7)      Off-season time is specialization time.

Growth is limited during any dieting phase. If you are trying to improve a weak bodypart six weeks from a contest, then you have started too late. Use your non-competitive off-season (when you are happy and well-fed) as the time to hammer your weak points. If you cycle your calories throughout the week, plan so that your "extra calorie/additional carb" days fall on the same days as your specialization workout.

8)      Keep your specialization phases limited to 6-8 weeks at a time.

Eight weeks is the maximal amount of time for a specialization phase (six weeks is preferable). Any more than this and both mental focus and muscle size/strength gains starts to dwindle. For extreme weak points perform a second specialization phase but ONLY after taking an equal amount of time in which you return to your normal training routine. Limit the number of specialization phases to a maximum of three a year (no more than two for the same bodypart).

Double-Whammy Specialization Workouts

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