Core tip: Olympian bodybuilder Phil Heath has successfully overcome his physical flaws. The word "narrow" no longer applies to him. The size of his deltoid muscles even exceeds that of his head! His back biceps posture has become a classic look in the history of bodybuilding, and his waist is still tight. To. Oh, and his chest: thick, full, and extremely separated, an important guarantee for him to win the Mr. Olympia.
How did he do it? Continue reading to see how Phil Heath turned a weak part of his body into a key weight!
Flex: Before we discuss your training plan, can you tell us what training principles and training techniques you have used in chest training in the past few years? Usually, explore how to transform the disadvantaged parts of the body into Dominant parts, rather than exploring how to continuously maintain the dominant parts of the body, is more helpful to readers.
Phil Heath: Time plays a key role. I received a lot of criticism early in my career, but people didn't realize that I only trained for 3 years and got my professional card.
Many people have spent decades doing this. However, as of October this year, I have only been practicing bodybuilding for ten years.
Phil Heath: Absolutely. During my basketball career, I didn't do any of the regular strength training that bodybuilders do, which is why I improved significantly every year. Because I don't have the experience that most bodybuilders have, I have to be completely cautious and careful about everything I do, and I have to get smarter. I had to learn from the experiences of other bodybuilders and listen to the teachings of those who were older. I need to evaluate for myself what I should do and how it will affect my body shape.
I've seen people who spend all their time in the gym, but they're not in the shape they want. They look the same year after year because they don't evaluate and think about how their efforts will affect their body shape. Simply walking into the gym every day is not enough. Are you getting the body you want to get?
Have a critical eye on what you do. Whether you're a professional athlete or a bodybuilding enthusiast, you want to see results. If you're not making progress, change your training plan.
Flex: What was your early chest training plan? I think like everyone else, I think the bench press is the most important exercise on chest training day.
Phil Heath: Exactly. In the beginning, I would do a lot of bench presses. But then I discovered that I liked the feeling of dumbbell training even more. Training with dumbbells has less risk of injury and gives you a greater range of motion.
Moreover, each side of your body will work independently, which will make the body appear more proportional.
Flex:During Olympia Week in 2005, you competed in the bench press competition, doing 46 reps with 225 pounds. It’s incredible!
Phil Heath: I thought no one remembered that anymore. I finished second behind Freeman [IFBB pro]. I can do 12 reps with 405 pounds, but I think bragging about that is nothing more than a sign of ego. I don't think this will get me Mr. Olympia boobs.
Flex: If you could go back in time, what would you say to your past self?
Phil Heath: Very simple. When you're getting ready to lift weights, your primary concern is how much weight you can lift, because when someone asks you, "How much weight can you bench press?" people want to say more weight.
But when you mature and think about why you did this, you will realize that heavy weight training is not the most effective way to help you build a perfect body.
Instead, you'll focus on the feeling of moving the weight over the training area, rather than on your hands and knees to lift the weight.
Sometimes, you need to move the weight slowly, so use a lighter weight while stimulating the muscle group from different angles.
Phil Heath’s Chest Exercise Plan:
Incline chest push with equipment 4 groups, 8-12 repetitions
Dumbbell fly 3 sets, 8-12 repetitions
Seated chest press 4 sets, 8-12 repetitions
Incline Rope Flyes 7 sets, 8-10 repetitions
(rest 30-40 seconds between sets)
Your Chest Training PlanThe first exercise in the row is the incline chest press. Why did you choose this way?
When I became a professional player, my upper chest became my priority training area, so every time I trained, I would choose some kind of upper chest training movement and start my training with it. My gym recently acquired this equipment, so for most of my career I have relied on dumbbells and barbells for training.
This equipment is extremely beneficial to my chest development, which also proves that both compound training and isolation equipment training have their own advantages.
What are the characteristics of this device?
Now, you can add this exercise to your own training plan. One of the advantages of this machine is that you can freely adjust the height of the seat so that you can stimulate your chest from different angles.
Many incline training machines don't offer good adjustment of the incline angle. They are either too high or too low, and the few slots they have don't allow you to train at the angle you like.
Are there any training tips you can tell readers?
One thing I know for sure is to lift your chin. Once you start increasing your training weight, there is a tendency for you to lower your chin to help you move the weight. What happens? You also "lower" your breasts.
When this happens, the pressure on the chest is transferred to the anterior deltoid muscles.
This leads to an interesting phenomenon. Many bodybuilders with well-developed shoulders and triceps find it difficult to develop their chests. How do you overcome this?
Early in my bodybuilding career, I would put a lot of stress on my shoulders and triceps during heavy chest training days. But using both free weights and machines allows me to focus on my chest. I could feel how my chest was working.
Muscle feeling during training is so important. I know this sounds like a cliché because everyone knows this, but it’s the absolute truth. You'll find that building good muscle feel is critical to your training results.
What is the distance between your hands?
You can adjust the grip distance of your hands. The smaller the grip, the greater the pressure on your inner chestThe bigger - but that also puts more stress on the triceps, and I need to isolate my triceps, so I go for a slightly wider grip.
You're training with five plates on each side of the barbell, and you're just a few weeks away from the 2011 Olympia, which is a lot of weight for a time like this.
I think the thing that has helped me grow the most over the past few years is that I can use enough weight and train at a high intensity to stimulate my chest.
I didn't drop the weight because I was afraid it would affect my breasts. But at the same time, I don’t want to be like a fool and train with too much weight and end up getting injured.
Most people are more concerned about the amount of weight they train with than how to lift the weight correctly. I can tell you that a lot of guys can push 405 pounds, but not a lot of guys have high quality chests.
After the warm-up, you will perform 4 sets of upper chest training. What are the number of repetitions for each set?
My rep range is 8-12. If I can do more than 12 reps on certain sets, then I'll keep doing it.
But if your gym doesn’t have heavy enough dumbbells and enough dumbbell plates, then do a few more sets with the right weight.
In one of my training videos, I was doing incline dumbbell bench presses with 150s, and even then I was still working toward 12 reps, and by the time I threw the dumbbells to the floor, I had already done 22 reps. It feels so great!
The heaviest dumbbells at my gym are the 170s, which I can do 8-10 reps with, but the 150s for 22 reps stimulates my muscles better. What I'm telling you is that sometimes high-rep training can give your muscles an unparalleled stimulus.
So after 4 sets of training, your upper chest has been stimulated enough, so what training movements will you choose next?
The two most basic movements for chest training are bench press and fly. Flyes are an isolation movement that stimulates the chest. Since the fly has a very wide range of motion, it will give your chest a nice stretch.
Sometimes I like to mix compound and isolation movements to hit my muscle groups at different points.
This seems to be a simple action, but it is not easy to do well, and few people can do it completely right. So how can you make a good flying bird?
The trick with flyes is to bend your elbows slightly and then keep them bent at that level. In my first year of bodybuilding, people told me that doing flyes should feel like hugging a tree. When doing flyes, you don't want to use too much weight.
I know that compound movements play a heavy role in your training plan, but does the same apply to flyes?
I'm sure many experts would disagree with this: but flyes convinced me that I could expand my ribcage a little because I was lowering so low and stretching so wide when doing flyes. It's really great to do this.
Frankly speaking, seeing Schwarzenegger's performance in "Pump Iron" gave me the motivation to make Asuka. His chest seemed so thick with each repetition. So flyes are also a very important training movement in my training plan.
I noticed that when you do the fly, the dumbbells don't touch each other at the top.
Doing this already gives my muscles a nice contraction, so I don't need to touch the dumbbells at the top. Additionally, when you touch the dumbbells together, the momentum from the dumbbell impact weakens your control of the weight.
This is a very confusing thing. Because you can bench press 405 pounds, you thought you could use a weight of 1 ton on this equipment, but you found that the weight you used was not as big as the bench press.
Do you think this training movement is important to you?
Any new exercise that makes you feel good will make you want to do more reps. But what about this kind of training movement that is not easy to do?
There are many times when I feel like I'm "weaker" when I go back to a workout I haven't done in a while. I mean, even though I was bigger than a certain guy, I couldn't even use half the weight he was training with.
This dilemma prompted me to do that training move. I later learned that because my muscles needed to adapt to some new movements, I would be engaging different muscle fibers.
Your muscles need a reason to grow. That is the heart and soul of fitness!
Can you tell us any tips on how to do chest push-ups with a seated machine?
One thing to note is to keep your back as close to the cushion as you would when doing a bench press. You may have a tendency to lean forward, but if you do this, you'll be pushing your shoulders forward. I like to use this move after a dumbbell workout.
I was already very tired at this point, so I didn’t need to think too much about weight balance.
The final exercise is the incline fly, where you use the cable tensioner version. In the gym, you rarely see anyone using this training move.
Yes, at this time I started stimulating the upper chest again. I might choose dumbbells or a seated chest press to train my upper chest, but today I chose a cable press. This will have many benefits. First, you receive a sustained pull.
When you use dumbbells, you may try to rest for a moment at the top of the movement. The rope will continue to "hold you" so the break doesn't come. Second, you can cross your hands at the top of the movement. This causes your muscles to contract harder while stimulating your inner chest.
The posture of this action is basically similar to the dumbbell fly, with the elbows fixed in a slightly bent state.
You maintain a good pace of progress while training. Are you conscious of this?
The first time I trained with Carter, I learned to reduce the amount of rest time. That's another way to increase the intensity of your training. The closer I get to the game, the shorter my rest periods are.
People often don't realize how much time they waste while resting and talking. You are in the gym to build muscle, so take action now!
I mainly focus on dumbbell training. I can do incline chest presses with the maximum weight during competition, so you can imagine how heavy my training weight can be during the off-season.
At this point, incline chest presses are not the most effective for me. I'll be doing some basic exercises as well as using more dumbbell exercises.
I would also use heavier weights and try to do 5-7 reps to create a different physical state.
If you could go back in time, how would your chest training program be different?
I will use dumbbell training more.
I really rarely used dumbbells in the beginning. I can do several barbell bench presses with 315 pounds, but I can't do the same movement with 120s dumbbells. At this point I realized that something was wrong with my training.
Finally, can you give any advice to readers who want to get breasts like yours?
Find the training method that works best for you and stick with it, but don’t be afraid to venture outside of your “comfort zone.” Have the courage to challenge yourself!
If you try a new exercise and don't get the feeling you were hoping for—after you've used it for enough time, of course—remember that you still have nothing to lose. You learned something new.
It’s like when you try a 12-week training plan from some magazine. You'll be miserable for the first few weeks, but by the end you'll be happy and can't wait to get started. The beginning is always difficult, but when you put it into action and reach the end, you will eventually find that what you have done is worth it. This is always the case!
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