In order to be a Mr. Olympia, fitness model or just a regular guy that catches stares around the street because of his body you need to have a complete physique meaning that you can’t have more or less of one body part than others, everything has to be developed equally and therefore worked with the same effort and intensity, you need to have in mind that depending on your genetic structure some body parts will come easy to grow for you but some won’t.
I say this because it happened to me and it really got on my nerves, no matter what I did my shoulders and chest wouldn’t grow I would get sore from each workout but they grew so slow that I felt I would never have good chest or shoulders, in the mean time my arms were getting big and I wasn’t even working them out that much, I maybe did biceps and triceps once every month but what I’m trying to get at is that it’s all genetic so you need to pay close attention to your body and how it responds to training and nutrition, I decided to help you out a little by giving you the basics on each body part.
Legs: A body can’t look complete if it’s missing half of it, you see too many people walk into the gym that look like Johnny Bravo, meaning that they have a well developed upper body but they have no legs and they tend to wear really baggy sweatpants to hide it. Each leg is divided into quads (front) and hamstrings (back) if you want to have fully developed tree trunks you need to hit both parts of the leg by doing heavy exercises such as Squats, Front Squats, Lunges, Leg Presses and Hack Squats, always go heavy and if the next day you can’t walk it means you succeeded so go heavy or go home.
Back: Your back makes up the core along with your legs and abs, you can’t see your back when working it out so it’s difficult to know how far you have progressed but you can always tell by your shirt size because if it gets tighter it’s definitely growing, remember that without a back you have no V taper or a strong core.
Back is one of the most difficult body parts to work out because you need heavy weight and the exercises you have to perform aren’t that fun to be honest but they’re worth it, if you want a well developed back think of it as a pair of wings of course you want them to be big and to spread wide from top to bottom and to get this you need to hit it from all angles with a good variety of exercises; Deadlifts, Barbell Rows, Dumbbell Rows, Cable Rows etc. try to focus on squeezing and contracting on the negative portion on the rep (Lower the weight slowly) always go heavy.
Shoulders: Without shoulders there is no V taper, try doing heavy and low reps for pressing movements and on the isolation exercises such as Fly’s try to go as heavy as possible for as many reps as you can always remember to control the weight, do a lot of pyramid and super sets because what you want to do with shoulders is make them burn to the point when you can’t lift your arms up, always remember that the shoulder is made up of three heads and they need to be equally worked, do Shrugs, Upward Lifts, Fly’s and heavy barbell and dumbbell presses.
Chest: The chest in my mind is divided in four sections: Outer, Inner, lower and upper this means that when I walk in the gym I try to hit my chest from every angle, people will tell you that there is no such thing as inner or upper chest because they consider it as a whole but let me tell you it’s not, imagine you chest as a wall that needs to be painted, if you just paint the lower or the upper portion the rest won’t be painted and will look incomplete ,well, the same thing goes with the chest if you don’t tear a certain part of the chest it won’t grow. Do heavy Dumbbell Presses this means incline, decline and flat, Dumbbell Fly’s and if you wish you can add some sort of machine movement at the end of the workout to finish it off.
Arms: They are easy to work out, triceps are 2/3 of your arm so you need to work them out meaning that you need to take it easy with the biceps, I mean, they are important and they look good but give them equal training along with the triceps. Forget about training forearms because it’s worthless as they grow better by doing heavy exercises with bars and dumbbells such as deadlifts and shrugs.
Calves: Never ignore these, if you don’t have them you will look like you’re walking on stilts specially if your legs are well developed, in order for calves to grow you need to train them with intensity and weight this means short 10 second rest periods between sets and some heavy toe lifts.
ABS: They look good and they feel good but they are made in the kitchen, you can work them out to make your core stronger but at the end of the day it’s all about diet, if you want to have a complete Ab package work on your Serratus which s located on the side of the abs, it looks pretty amazing it you have it.
Each body part needs to be trained in equal proportions now this doesn’t mean that you can train arms and legs for the same amount of time once a week this means that they need to grow equally, if after training for a year you feel you have a big chest but small shoulders try working out shoulders twice a week and take it easy on your chest workouts. It all applies for any body part, take into consideration that your workout routines need to be quick and to the point meaning they need to be intense and heavy, don’t forget your cardio, nutrition and supplements as they are really important to building a physique.
