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Natural BB Contest Coverage 2.0: Linear Weight Loss (15.3 kg), Minimal Lean Body Mass Loss (8.8%) on a 26-Week Contest Prep That Ended At 7.4% Body Fat as A New Pro

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This is not the weight class we are talking about, here. With a baseline muscle mass of 75.2kg and exactly 15.9kg of body fat, the natural bodybuilder in the case study at hand is far away from a monster back like this - for natural reasons ;-) Studies about bodybuilding are rare and if there are some, they are usually dealing with the dark sides of "un-natural" bodybuilding. Against that background I am happy to report that today's SuppVersity article continues what I would love to become a tradition that started in March 2013 with the ahead-of-print publication of Lindy Rossow's article "Natural bodybuilding competition preparation and recovery: a 12-month case study" in the International Journal of Sports Physiology & Performance ( learn more ) . I am talking about a tradition of articles about Scientific Natural Bodybuilding Contest Coverage, a coverage such as the one Brandon M. Kistler, Peter J. Fitschen, Sushant M. Ranadive, Bo Fernhall, an...
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Nonuniform Muscle Hypertrophy: Activation Patterns and Eventually Exercise Selection Determine Triceps Growth

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Is it possible that you can - within your genetic limits - influence the growth pattern of your tris by the way you train? "Localized muscle growth? Wtf now you're kiddin' me, right!?" Well, I want to be honest with you. It's not like you could actually grow exclusively the peak of your biceps, but the fact that even the observation that the maximal increase in muscle cross-sectional area does actually correspond to the area of maximal stimulation can be considered a "novel finding", is testimony to how under-researched the optimal modalities of training for such profane things as cosmetic muscle gains actually are. In the end, you'd even have to wonder that Taku Wakahara and his colleagues from the Waseda and Doshisha and Ritsumeikan Universities in Japan even dared investing precious time and money into a part of human physiology that's still looked down upon by large parts of the scientific establishment. Maybe, it's like a carte bl...
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Adelfo Cerame RtWC12: Shoulder Your Weaker Body Parts! Bring Up Those Lagging Delts - Exercises, Splits, Routines

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Image 1: After his 2nd place at the Nationals, Adelfo wanted to bring up his rear delts and although the lighting does not really do him justice, he made use of the weeks between the Nationals (right) and the USA (left) and filled up considerably. It is more than 3 months ago that Adelfo and I have been talking about ways to bring up his somewhat lagging delts (if you could even say that there is something "lagging" about Adelfo's physique), yet still, it seems as if it had been yesterday that I told him that he would not have to wonder that those delts were not growing, when he was working them almost exclusively with compound movements for stronger body parts, which wouldn't allow the side and, more importantly, the rear delts to reach that highly productive, growth triggering point of just too much load to handle, but still not so much load that adaptation could not make up for it. And judged by his latest progress pics, Adelfo did not just take that comment to...
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Step By Step Guide to Your Own Workout Routine - Part II: Choosing the Right Training Style(s) for Your Goals

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Image 1: Maybe it is because I don't have the beard, but for me HIT a la Mike Metzner never worked out ;-) In the last installment you should have learned " How to Fit Your Training, Rest Days, Strength and Conditioning Workouts into Your Personal Schedule ". By now, you should thusly have a general idea of what your future workout week is going to look like. You should, for example, know that you will have to bring your gymbag to the office on Monday, to be able to go right to the gym after work. While you will have programmed your shiny new iPhone to wake you up on Wednesday early, so that you can do a fasted HIIT workout before you shower, have breakfast and head to work... what you still need to know, though, is what exactly you are about to do at the gym, on your treadmill or simply in the park next door. The second part of the "Step By Step Guide to Your Own Workout Routine" thusly starts with a chapter on training types and splits. A fundamental de...
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If You Go "High Carb", You Better Go Really High! Seven Meals/Day, More than 800g of Carbs, Less Than 50g of Fat & 1000kcal Over Maintenance and Still "Lean Gains"!

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Image 1: This picture of Lee Priest, in the "off-season" is a symbol for the classic "bulking" vs. "dieting" cycles. Yet while the artificially enhanced IFBB-pros use this practice to get more muscular every year, many amateurs use their "bulking phase" as an excuse to go totally havoc on food - and the results are identical to those of their sedentary peers: Obesity, diabetes, heart disease. If the term "low carb flu" was not already used to refer to the (allegedly) transient state of weakness and general malaise, when people are switching from a "regular" (usually "high carb") to a low-, let alone no-carb diet, I would have used it to refer to an infectious brain disease. A disease that has befallen more and more formerly healthy, lean physical culturists who are now complaining about "chronic fatigue syndrome" and "adrenal burnout". It is a disease that is - yet again - the consequence of b...
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Building a Bigger Engine: Resistance After Endurance Training Increases Mitochondrial Biogenesis & Protein Synthesis and Ramps Up Fat Metabolism

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Image 1: There is nothing wrong with some "classic cardio" training, especially if you spike it up to build your mitochondrial engine In a recent review of the literature, J.M. Wilson from the University of Tampa analyzed the results of 27 studies to determine whether and to which extend concomitant endurance training does / could have detrimental effects on the outcomes of resistance training ( Wilson. 2011 ). And I suspect that it will not surprise you that Wilson found negative correlations "between frequency (-.26 to -.35) and duration (-.29 to -.75) of endurance training [and] hypertrophy, strength, and power." What is yet also noteworthy is a similarly significant (p<0.05) correlation with lower body fat levels and maximal heart rates on part on those strength athletes who did some sort of endurance exercises. Now, a more recent study which is soon going to be published in Journal of Applied Physiology sheds some more light on the complex interplay o...
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Training for Size & Strength - Does the Rest Matter? Study Finds 7-9% Greater Increase in Muscle Size With Decreasing Rest Periods.

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Image 1: If you want to build Arnold-esque arms you better not sit around too long in-between your sets. "Short rest periods to burn fat, medium rest periods to build muscle and long rest periods to build strength" - it's actually pretty likely that one of your trainers, gym buddies or fatherly mentors told you something along those lines in the past. In view of the results of a soon to be published international study by Brazilian researchers from the State University of Campinas and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and their American colleagues from the Eastern Illinois University , the University of Memphis and the Colorado College ( Souza-Junior. 2011 ), this is probably the next item on list of widely accepted bodybuilding myths that have a spark of truth to them ... at least for recreational strength trainees who use some creatine monohydrate to promote their strength and mass gains. Learn more about muscle builder & fat shredder training at th...
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"Inner Chest", "Upper Abs", "Biceps Peak" & Co!? Study Finds Proximal and Distal Part of the Triceps Grow Independently and According to Training Stimulus.

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Image 1: Training for the peak, could it be possible, after all? (image from provitamin.in ) You probably have read my repeated notes on the issue of training individual muscles fibers in complete isolation in the 7-part SuppVersity EMG-Series . I guess in view of the results of a very recent study from the Faculty of Sports Sciences at the Waseda University in Japan ( Wakahara. 2011 ), it might be that I will have to revise my statement. It could in fact be that you can train a specific part of a muscle fiber - if not individually, then at least predominantly. Despite the fact that our movements are always orchestrated by the interplay of a whole host of muscle-groups and -fibers, Wakahara et al.'s results suggest that it may even be possible to target specific parts of individual fibers by selecting the correct exercises . In other words, instead of doing incline bench presses for the upper chest, you could, as many trainers recommend it for years do them with a narro...
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