NY Pro Stage Analysis and Training Weak Body Parts

Coming off stage from the NY Pro I had several things on my mind and like everyone that competes, what is the next move?

I had step back and remind myself of the ultimate goal of always bringing an improved version of myself to stage. So, would shutting it down for all of 2021 be needed to improve or can I show improvements gunning for the 2021 Olympia?

I weigh 204-205 in mornings, so I have some stage weight I can add, but I don’t think I need an entire year off to do that. Also, I don’t plan to leave the 212 division and likely won’t have too many more years competing, as I am not a young 20 year old buck anymore. So, going all in for the 2021 Olympia makes sense. My next show will be the Puerto Rico Pro in 5.5 weeks and I will be a able to compete with my wife, Renee, which will be a lot of fun.

Back on analyzing my stage pics and my plan will revolve around what I NEED, to be more complete on stage. These are the shots that really stand out and show weakness, especially in a line up. 

Front double and side chest, my chest flattens out and could use more development.

In rear lat spread and rear double, more trap development and glute development.

In all poses, legs and arms are strong. Delts can come up as chest and back improve.

So my split design change will reflect this.

I was doing: push, pull, delt/arm, legs, off day, repeat

Now my split is:

Pull (hip hinge and glute iso work)

Push (chest focus)

Legs (quad focus, with glute iso work)

Off

Pull (back focused day only)

Push (delt focus)

Off

So, instead of push and pull hit every 5 days, it will get hit every 3-4 days.

Legs will decrease in frequency to once per week and arm work will be spread throughout the sessions.

My total weekly set volume is going to be the same though, but with higher frequency. Once I adapt to this split then I can add some volume in. What I mean by this if I did a total of 8 work sets per week for chest, I will still do 8 work sets per week. Moving from training a muscle every 5 days to 3 days mean to keep the same weekly volume I will do less sets per session.

This set up always a focus on chest and back, but I can train legs and arms at maintenance to put all recovery resources to the muscles I want to bring up. A topic for another day is increasing nutrition on your focus body part days.

Remember if you like to learn on how to program and understand why I do the things I do, J3 University will be the course to teach how to level up as an athlete and coach. Sessions open June 4th to 6th.