The off-season is where champion physiques are built. Sure, the pre-contest phase is important. You will need to have the best possible presentation of the muscles you have built, and diet and cardio do that. But the most gains you will make each year take place in those months where you run a decent cycle, add some food, and train like mad. Here are some specifics for off-season bulking success for the non-natural bodybuilder.

AAS

Typically, an off-season steroid stack is going to be stronger and more potent (read: toxic) than what you use during your pre-contest phase. Start with a testosterone base (any ester will suffice) for 400 to 600 mg per week. You can supplement with 400 mg Nandrolone, and perhaps a small run of Dianabol for the first three weeks to facilitate growth from day one. That’s it. You don’t need to go overboard, and you don’t need heavier compounds like Anadrol or Trenbolone. Keep it simple and keep the dosages moderate.

Supplementation

The biggest mistake most bodybuilders make in the off-season is the prolonged use of stimulants. Caffeine is very useful for keeping you elevated in the pre-contest phase, especially in conjunction with ephedrine and aspirin as part of the invaluable ECA stack. But in the off-season, stimulants like caffeine and ephedrine have no place in your routine. Also, if you’re running a cycle, products such as creatine won’t help all that much, as the water retention you see from the AAS will provide the same benefits you desired from the creatine. Stick with multi-vitamins, anti-oxidants, Omega 3s, and whey protein.

Diet

You’ll want to enjoy a surplus of 800 to 1200 calories per day over your daily metabolic requirements. Keep the sources clean, mainly from lean meats, complex carbohydrates such as rice and pasta, and drink plenty of water. The addition of anabolics to the mix means you could get away with eating the junk in the off-season. However, keep your cheat meals down to 1 to 2 per week, and eat clean the remainder of the time. Your body will work more efficiently and your muscles will grow faster when given the correct fuel.

Training

You know the basics here. Train four days per week. Use plenty of heavy compound movements, including squats, deadlifts, bench press, barbell curls, and shoulder presses. Keep the repetitions low, in the 6 to 12 range. You will need to track your poundage use, but keep an eye on the “feel” as you lift as well. Train with a partner, and always use knee wraps and back belts during your heaviest lifts. Train heavy and smart and you will grow. The use of AAS in your routine means you will be able to lift more weight for more repetitions, and recover faster. Push yourself to make the best use of the addition of these compounds.

Gaining mass isn’t rocket science, but it isn’t easy either. A sensible steroid stack, coupled with reasonable supplementation, a solid diet, and plenty of training is all it takes to add 15 to 20 pounds of solid mass to your frame next off-season!

For many bodybuilders, the upper and inner areas of the pectorals, or chest, can be one of the toughest areas of the body to develop. This can be for a variety of reasons. New bodybuilders may focus upon the flat bench press, which will lead to a developmental imbalance. The shoulders, or more likely the triceps, may overpower the pectorals in the benching movement, which will lead to a set of arms that can’t stop growing, and a set of upper pecs that won’t start growing. Or, the bodybuilder could just have a set of genetics that dictates a smaller and flatter inner chest is in the cards. Whatever the cause, there are some methods a bodybuilder can employ to help improve the upper pectorals. Let’s check some of them out!

Train the upper pectorals first

This may seem like common sense. Obviously, you want to hit a weaker area first when energy and strength levels are at their highest. However, when it comes to the chest, bodybuilders are often creatures of habit who choose to hit their chest with bench press first every time. It may take a conscious effort to reverse this trend, but it can be done. Require yourself to complete two incline movements, perhaps a pressing and a flye movement, before you plunge into your flat bench favorites.

Aim for the neck

Incline barbell presses in which you bring the barbell down to the neck, clavicle, or even Adam’s Apple are very effective for improving the upper pectorals in a hurry. Always use a spotter when completing this movement, as the weight will be heavy and the angle will make you very vulnerable to injury of the serious variety. Also be sure to adequately stretch out the rotator cuff and shoulder joints for an extra 2 minutes before plunging into the heavy pressing sets. The final 2 to 3 inches of the movement as you reach the neck will place the shoulder in a very precarious position.

Seated incline cable flyes

This exercise may be a bit awkward in terms of equipment and gym etiquette, so you may wish to complete it in off-peak hours when equipment won’t be at such a demand. Pull a mobile incline bench into the area of the cable crossovers. Set the pin at the bottom near the floor, and proceed to complete 8 to 15 repetitions of cable incline flyes. This continuous tension will certainly keep the upper pectorals stimulated, and that very last few inches of ‘pulling’ as the hands come together will stimulate the inner pectorals in a way dumbbells simply cannot. This movement requires a lot of gym floor space, but the results are equally noticeable.

Overhead presses with the log

If standard bodybuilding exercises have failed to lead to any new muscle gains, perhaps it is time to resort to powerlifting means. Use of the metal ‘log’, or long tubular weight with handles used for overhead presses, may help to build up the upper chest and pectoral/deltoid tie-ins in a way your flat and incline benching cannot deliver. At the very least, training with this device will keep you motivated, keep your muscle fibers guessing, and lead to a bit of new growth.

In the off-season, the goal of the bodybuilder is to add muscle – at all costs. Bodybuilders will train like madmen, consume thousand of calories, sleep for hours, and consume every supplement and steroid under the sun to add muscle to their frame. When it’s time to begin the pre-contest phase, they’re probably feeling as big as a house, and ready to get sliced and diced to show off all this new muscle on stage.

Unfortunately, this is not always what happens when the dieting begins. Very often, the bodybuilder will lose much of his valuable muscle during this dieting phase, and show little to no improvement when he finally takes the stage after a year off of competition. This can be a highly disappointing process, one which may cause the bodybuilder to become frustrated and consider leaving the sport he loves so much.

It doesn’t have to be this way, however. Proper diet, training, and supplementation during the pre-contest phase can lead the bodybuilder to retain most of his muscle gains while dieting down – and in some cases, even continue to make gains. Let’s look at some of the areas of concern.

Solid diet

The diet is probably the single-most important factor in keeping the muscle on your frame while leaning down. Keep the proteins and fats high, and lower your body weight by manipulating your carbohydrate intake. A solid pre-contest diet would include 2 to 3 whey shakes per day, along with 3 to 4 small meals of chicken, rice, pasta, and leafy greens.

Low-intensity cardio

You’ll want to complete cardio immediately upon waking in the morning to ensure your body is using body fat for fuel, not carbohydrates stored in the digestive track. Keep the intensity low, and your hart rate only slightly elevated. Then complete 30 to 45 minutes without stopping. Slow and steady wins the race, if the goal is a pursuit of new muscle mass on contest day!

Plenty of rest

Your body will need more rest than usual during the pre-contest phase. After all, you’re expecting the body to do more (by adding cardio to your routine) with fewer calories (given a carbohydrate caloric deficit). Devote an extra 45 to 60 minutes to sleeping each night, and take a quick nap each day if your schedule allows for it.

Watch the cortisol!

Pre-contest fat burners such as ECA (25 mg ephedra, 200 mg caffeine, and 250 mg aspirin, stacked) are great for leaning up. However, they also cause cortisol levels to spike, which can lead to stringiness consistent with less muscle. If you use fat burners and notice your muscle disappearing along with the body fat, it might be time to reconsider their use.

Anabolic steroids

Many bodybuilders are larger on contest day than when they begin their pre-contest diet. This isn’t due to genetics, hard work, or nutrition. These individuals use anabolic steroids to help maintain their recovery abilities and actually grow muscle while dieting. If you understand the risks and rewards associated with the use of AAS, you can use them to maintain and even build muscle while dieting.

When you enter the gym to train arms, you have to give certain exercises priority over others. After all, some movements simply work better than others. You cannot dedicate equal energy to every single exercise for a body part. You’d never place cable crossovers on the same level as incline bench press, when it came to chest. You’d never place leg extensions on the same plane as squats, when it came to leg training. Yet for some reason, many bodybuilders seem to just toss any and all exercises at the arms in the hopes of saturating them with a wide variety of stimulation, which will lead to growth.

Variety is important in order to keep the muscles from becoming too complacent. However, you need to use the same solid stable of exercises continually because they do work. You’ll even see professional bodybuilders, at the top of their profession, using the same exercises they used their first day in the gym. Here are the top 5 movements for each of the parts of the upper arms.

Top Five Biceps Movements

1. Standing Biceps Barbell Curls

2. Standing Alternate Dumbbell Curls

3. EZ-Bar Preacher Curls

4. Seated Dumbbell Curls

5. Biceps Cable Curls

Top Five Triceps Movements

1. Skull Crushers

2. Close-Grip Bench Press

3. Triceps Dumbbell Press Behind Head

4. Triceps Cable Pressdowns

5. Dumbbell Kickbacks

When it comes to training the biceps, heavy metal rules. You will notice your gym is likely packed with trainers using every sort of biceps cable and machine movement known to man. It’s much less common to see the same trainers using set after set of standing barbell curls. They’re heavy, they are painful, and there’s nothing glamorous about them. But they work! Start your day with barbell curls and work your way down the list.

The triceps comprise the majority of the bulk, or the meat, of the upper arm. Many bodybuilders mistakenly train their biceps with reckless abandon, yet neglect the much larger triceps muscle. Nobody ever asks one to “flex your triceps!” of course. However, a complete and thorough arm training routine places three-fifths of the total number of sets in the triceps category. As a result your training ratio on a standard arm day will be 3:2 triceps:biceps. Always begin your routine with the two exercises which add the most muscle mass to the upper arms, skull crushers and close-grip bench pressing. From there, you can use a variety of dumbbell and cable movements to help better shape the triceps head.

Forearms will need direct stimulation work, but only after the biceps and triceps have received adequate stimulation. They can be trained at either the conclusion of biceps and triceps training on arm day, or at the tail end of back training. Begin your forearm training with four sets of either hammer curls or reverse-grip biceps curls using the EZ-curl bar. Then, move to wrist curls with a very light barbell to complete the day. You’ll be spending only 8 sets on forearms, so train them to the maximum to make each set count.

Every bodybuilder is put together differently, and we all respond to our training by growing at different rates. As a result, we very often find ourselves confronted with both strong and weaker muscle groups which stand out from the rest. Strong muscle groups are acceptable, as long as they don’t destroy your symmetry. Weak muscle groups are entirely unacceptable, however, and can end up costing you a placing or two when you enter a show. Additionally, a weak muscle group can lead to injury resulting from an imbalance while completing a heavy compound movement. Here are some training ideas for each of the major muscle groups of that body that you can employ to help fix an imbalance.

Chest

Train heavier. Use more sets. Utilize the help of a spotter and begin training to failure more often. Avoid the cables and machines for a bit, and just use lots of heavy iron work. Or, if you have been doing that, try using high repetition free weight work. Eat more. Stretch the chest muscles every day of the week. Spend more time in the Smith machine moving more weight than you can normally comfortably complete on your own.

Back

While free weights are normally prescribed for building back mass, there are some individuals who are unable to properly ‘feel” what the weight should be doing. If this is the case for you, spend some more time on the Hammer Strength rowing machines. These devices force you to move the weight along a pre-determined path or arc. Use five full sets for every exercise, with at least 20 working sets per back day. High repetitions are very effective when it comes to training the back!

Shoulders

Supersets involving lots of side raises and bent over dumbbell raises for the rear deltoids are very effective. Train shoulders on their own day, early in the lifting week to make it a priority when your energy levels are still at their highest. Keep the weights a little lighter than you are used to, but move the weights a little slower to get even more out of each repetition.

Arms

Leave the machines alone and stick with heavy metal lifting – the free weights. Train arms with 12 to 16 sets on a combined triceps/biceps day, as well as on chest day (triceps) and back day (biceps) for 2 to 6 sets. Use “down the rack” training with dumbbell curl sets of 50, 40, 30, then 25 pounds for the dumbbell curls, with every set performed successively.

Legs

If your legs aren’t growing, eat more. Cut back your cardio training, as well as any non-essential or work related leg work that you can do. In other words, if you have small thighs and you spend four hours per night at the club dancing, you might be sabotaging your own returns. Keep the squats to parallel but experiment with the 20-repetition variety. Learn to feel the leg press movement more. Bodybuilders often rush through this exercise, when it is arguably as effective as the squat, and without a doubt much safer.

Q: I am so pissed off right now! I have started to develop stretch marks on my biceps after lifting heavy, but noticed the other day that I now have them in the oddest place – in the inside of my thighs. Should I use something to prevent or treat them?

A: This is more common than you think. But there are deep stretch marks and superficial ones. If you’re talking about the skin that is really thin next to your groin area, they are likely white ones that are faint looking. They shouldn’t be red. If they are, that’s something I can’t address. You probably never have looked at any other male in that area ever, so you don’t know really what the norm is. But I can tell you, it’s fairly common. That’s really sensitive skin that feathers out from the genitals and then becomes thicker skin. But, if it bothers you, you can do one thing that may help – buy a tube of Strivectin. They sell it at the department stores. It is a great cream and actually does help. Other than that, there is nothing else I can say. If you want to use Strivectin on your biceps, you could do that too. Drink lots of water, as hydration is key. And remember, you have them because you’re growing. If your mate/ girlfriend doesn’t mind it, you shouldn’t either.

The barbell curl is often the first exercise a bodybuilder will discover in the gym, and one which delivers terrific results in terms of upper arm mass when they are completed correctly. This is the tricky part, however. Many bodybuilders don’t complete the exercise correctly, and there isn’t a great deal of literature out there dedicated to proper completion of slow and effective barbell curls. Here are four tips for making your barbell curls more productive.

Back it up!

Keep your back straight for the entire duration of this movement. Slouching or bending over not only places your lower back and neck at risk of injury, but also removes the workload from the biceps and draws it to other parts of the body. If you have a tough time keeping your back straight, you may want to consider standing against a wall while completing your repetitions. Assuming you keep your elbows in, this will not be a problem. This of course, takes us to…

Elbows in!

Your elbows must remain against your body for the duration of your biceps curls. Allowing them to flare out provides some great additional strength when completing curls. However, it also takes the brunt of the workload and transfers it to the back, shoulders, neck, hips and forearms. Remember that the goal of biceps curls is to stimulate the two heads of the biceps. While efficiency is great in most facets of our lives, it doesn’t matter much when it comes to targeting certain muscle groups. We want this exercise to be very hard for the biceps. We need to do everything possible to ensure the biceps are being forced to suffer though a very painful workload. Keeping your elbows in keeps the biceps in play, which leads to biceps growth.

Lighten Up!

How much weight do you use for your heaviest sets of barbell curls? There’s a good chance you could peel about 20% off of the bar and see better results than you are seeing now. You don’t believe it? Look at the training DVDs of top bodybuilders. Even men like Ronnie Coleman keep their barbell curl weight at 135 or less most of the time. Yet you see 180-pound monsters at your gym with 15-inch arms using more weight every day, right? The key to biceps growth is feeling each muscle contraction in order to draw the most possible blood into the arms. You can’t do that when you’re breaking good form in order to heave more weight than you can handle. Keep the weights heavy, but manageable!

Speed Kills

Tempo means everything when it comes to upper arm training. The slower you can complete biceps curls, the more effective they will be in terms of building up new muscle mass. Many bodybuilders rush through their training trying to ‘pump” up the upper arms. The truth is that ten very slow repetitions with the same amount of weight will deliver a more lasting and meaningful pump. Treat your set of biceps curls as you would a relationship. The more time you put into it, the longer it will last. And we all love training biceps, right?

The hamstrings are a body part that is ignored by numerous bodybuilders, and underdeveloped in nearly all of them. Even some athletes with some bulging thighs will frequently activity hamstrings that truthfully appear as if they’ve by no means trained them a day within their life. Hamstrings really are a muscle group which don’t react all that well to heavy fat, as they are little and can’t develop to the new dimensions we see with other physique elements. The trick to training hamstrings would be to fill them with as significantly nutrient-rich blood as possible. Right here is really a program which does just that.

Lying Leg Curls
Begin your leg biceps exercise with 4 sets of this attempted and accurate motion. Total 4 sets of ten to twelve repetitions. Don’t be concerned about lowering any bodyweight – nevertheless.

Seated Leg Curls
Provided your health club has one of those, complete four sets. With every set, complete your very first 10 repetitions to failure, then decrease the workload by 40% and complete 6 to eight far more repetitions.

Stiff-Leg Deadlifts
As soon as again, total four sets. With every set, complete your very first 10 repetitions to failure, then decrease the workload by 40% and complete 6 to eight far more repetitions. Make use of the tiny ten pound plates on the bar that you can slide off effortlessly, assuming you’ve got two 45-pound plates about the bar first. In the summary of this movement, you must be fairly much fully invested and prepared for some nice calming stretching. You are not very there however.

Standing Static Hamstring Flexing
Stand nevertheless and practice flexing the hamstrings for sixty seconds at a time, with sixty seconds of rest among sets. Total five of these sessions just before transferring on to the last movement.

Lying Leg Curls
Total 4 sets. With each and every set, complete your initial 10 repetitions to failure, then lessen the workload by 40% and total six to 8 a lot more repetitions. Lastly, reduce the workload by an additional twenty percent and just stop counting reps. Let the burn off arrive.

Should you be capable to place hamstrings on their personal day, you will surely see gains. Otherwise, they ought to be positioned on each day specifically 72 hours after you train entrance thighs, and skilled with an unrelated physique part, like shoulders or biceps. This can avoid the muscle group from having its pump, or your efforts, stolen away from a thigh or calf work out immediately just before or soon after training hamstrings.

Hamstring coaching is difficult simply because it’s really hard to accurately gauge the progress you might be generating with this particular muscle group. Even once you are capable to absolutely destroy them, as with this workout previously mentioned, you in no way quite know if they’re expanding, or just acquiring sore. Using a lot of compound movements for thighs can also aid with their advancement. Lunges and squats are notorious for building up both the hamstrings too as the thighs. Blend it up, and bear in mind the goal isn’t to possess incredible hamstrings. For most people, that can never happen. Your goal need to be to accomplish really very good hamstrings, which complement the rest of the physique (which is made up of amazing physique parts). Hamstrings are a basis muscle group, and you should develop them to a very solid degree.

If you are a bodybuilder then the first rule you need to learn is that you should not take steroids because they will limit you from performing at your level best during training and other forms of competition. If you are an athlete you should not take steroids because they will cause you not to perform at your level best. The intensity of your training will be greatly hindered if you consume alcohol and therefore you need to avoid it.

The next time you think about partaking in this social drink then you need to remember that you are not adding value in any way and you are only risking your chances of succeeding in bodybuilding. Have you ever wondered why people vomit when they take alcohol in excess? This is because when you take alcohol in excess you tend to become very intoxicated ad therefore the body has to look for ways which it can be able to get rid of the toxins immediately through vomiting. When you take a lot of alcohol you will have the following negative impact on your bodybuilding progress;

• Depletes your bodily stock of the B vitamins
• Exhaust your stock of antioxidants such that you have insufficient amounts to fight disease
• Negatively affect muscle growth
• Decrease your endurance
• Places strain on the immune system
• Overwork the liver and the kidneys
• Negatively affect both the brain and the CNS (central nervous system)
• Lower the bodily aerobic capacity
• Increase your fatigue
• You become severely dehydrated
• Reduces your capacity of recovery
• Reduces your capacity of fat metabolism in effect making your body a store for fat

What makes alcohol very unhealthy? Alcohol is not healthy because the body normally takes time before it absorbs it in the body and also it is metabolized very slowly by the body. The body takes a lot of time before it removes alcohol from your system and that is why it will take time before you are able to do any intense training. There have been various researches done on the effect of alcohol on bodybuilding. One such study took several bodybuilders and each bodybuilder was made to drink a lot of alcohol within 48 hours. After they were given alcohol they were then asked to lift weights. When they were lifting weights they could not train intensely as they used to before they took alcohol. The conclusion was that it is true alcohol tends to affect the intensity of a bodybuilders training.

Not only is alcohol dangerous in bodybuilding nut it can also greatly affect your health as well. There are many people who have died because of driving while under the influence of alcohol. In fact many road carnages are as a result of drinking while under the influence of alcohol.

When you’re training the upper back, you’re really training for two goals which are functionally related, but visually different. Back width involves how wide your back appears on the bodybuilding stage. Back thickness involves how big it appears in shots from all angles – or how much it protrudes on every pose. Let’s examine how to train to achieve both objectives.

Thickness

Barbell rows are the most important movement for adding thickness to your upper back. Dumbbell rows offer a tad more flexibility, allowing you to pull the weight past the point where a barbell would come in contact with the area of your abdomen near the belly button. Despite this – whether it is for the manliness factor or the fact that more weight can be used because fewer stabilizer muscles are employed, the barbell row stands in the front of the class when it comes to back thickness movements.

After completing those two movements, you should find a variety of pulldown machines in the Hammer Strength and Nautilus sections which can help you lift some seriously heavy weight for the upper back without having to balance or control the weight. The fixed arc nature of these exercises means that you will not have to do anything but push. You can either move the weight, or you cannot. It’s that simple.

Finally, the use of close-grip cable movements cannot be neglected. Being able to contract the muscle group the entire duration of the movement keeps continuous tension on the muscle group, which is very good for stimulating greater blood flow.

Width

There is no movement more effective for adding width to the back than the chin-up. They may be a little tough to complete for untrained people or for those bodybuilders weighing anything over 250 pounds. But they need to be completed. If you cannot complete them, spend some time at the assisted chinning machine.

You will be able to remove a small amount, such as 10, 20, 30, or 40 pounds from the bodyweight workload you are pulling. This will allow you to complete full repetitions and strengthen the muscle groups of the back. Soon, you’ll be chinning your body weight with no problem! Aside from chins, very wide-grip lat pulldowns are an excellent movement for adding width to the back. You may find them a bit easier to complete than pull-ups, which as you can expect will mean their results will be less.

However, the ability to reduce the weight, hold contraction, and vary your grip without injury to the back makes this a movement you can’t neglect if the goal is upper back width.

Together, these movements work to help deliver you a back that is both wide and thick. Some bodybuilders will split their days between the two. Others like to combine everything into one mean back day. Whatever your preference, as long as you complete these movement each week, you’ll find yourself an amazing back in no time!