Mission: Shoulders to Boulders

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Published on Saturday, 02 July 2011 20:37

Written by Bobby Ashhurst

“The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.” ~ Muhammad Ali

There have been a lot of people asking what this category is about. It’s about balance and symmetry to help present the most aesthetically pleasing physique in the eyes of the judges and crowd. Part of achieving that is admitting to yourself what your weaknesses are and improving upon them. Mine happen to be my shoulders. I thought I had pretty good shoulders. My girlfriends never complained…but now that I think about it, maybe that’s why they are all ex-girlfriends now. My deficiency was made very clear in Chicago as I showed off my golf ball sized delts next to the likes of Kevin Perod and Alex Carneiro. Kevin looked like he was wearing a pair of football shoulder pads. WTF?!?!

I clearly have some work to do so since I stepped off stage at the Jr Nationals I’ve been on a mission to catch them up to the rest of my body. So I’m going to share my delt workout that I just went through today with my friend and NPC bodybuilder, Xavius Gayden, and due to my urging he is taking another shot at Men’s Physique at the LA Championships with me. Not sure why I just convinced a genetic freak to step on stage against me but you can’t become the best you are meant to be unless you are willing to compete against those who have a good shot at beating you.

Anyway, he agreed to run through my workout with me today and I think he may have been surprised to see that we physique competitors train just as hard as bodybuilders. I’m not sure if I was amped for this workout a little more because I got to train with someone I felt could keep up with me or maybe it was the sample of GAT Nitraflex. Either way I was ready to get to work on building some boulders! A common question he kept asking me during this workout was how many reps I just did. If you read any of my other blogs on workouts you realize that I love to work to failure every set so my answer was, “I don’t know. I didn’t count”. Lol. To me, even your warm up sets should burn.

Here was today’s workout:

1. Side cable raises – moderate weight x 15-20 reps x 3 sets

2. Smith machine press – moderate to heavy weight x 10-20 reps x 4 sets. Drop sets to failure for the 4^th set

3. Kneeling front delt barbell press & wide cable upright rows – moderate to heavy weight x 10-15 reps x 3 sets

4. Rear dumbbell lateral on incline bench – heavy weight x 50 reps x 2 sets

5. Kneeling crossover cable raises – moderate weight x 15-20 reps x 3 sets

If you do this workout with intensity and pace you should get a great pump throughout all sides of your deltoids while completely fatiguing the muscle group. I just know if I step on stage with my shoulders looking the same as they did in Chicago than it won’t be for lack of trying.

I wasn’t going to include this but figured why not. About midweek we also decided to revamp my diet as well to keep me full. For all the previous shows this year I competed at 168-170 lbs and took in 2000-2200 calories today. I allowed myself to pig out until I was disgusted at the site of food right after Chicago but cleaned it up this week. I started the week at 6.2% bodyfat and ended at 5.6%. Here is my daily caloric intake and body weight for this week:

Sun: 2517 cals 186 lbs

Mon: 2158 cals 184.4 lbs

Tue: 2535 cals 184 lbs

Wed: 2856 cals 181.6 lbs

Thu: 3068 cals 183.4 lbs

Fri: 3044 cals 185 lbs

Sat: 3050 cals (est) 183.4 lbs

It doesn’t really help for me to keep training so much without feeding the machine along with it. We decided to add a fat burner today. I thought I might get some pushback on this but apparently my trainers assumed I had been taking a fat burner all this time so they were pretty amped to know that it’s a new element we can add to my plan. So for the next week we will keep the calories about the same and see how my body reacts to the introduction of a fat burner. I’ll let you know how it goes next week. Time for me to eat…again!

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