Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Alberto Nunez on Finding & Fixing Muscle Imbalances

Episode Date: December 16, 2016

This is an interview with professional bodybuilder and coach Alberto Nunez from Team 3DMJ on how to spot and fix muscle imbalances. I thought Alberto would be the perfect guy to talk to about this because he not only talks the talk, but he walks the walk. He’s an accomplished bodybuilder with an absolutely insane physique, and he and his team have also helped hundreds of other bodybuilders build their best physiques ever and make a career for themselves. I’m also excited to put this interview up because it’s a question I get all the time from both guys and girls, so I’m sure there are quite a few of you out there that could use some help in this regard as well. As you’ll see, the whole topic of muscle imbalances is pretty simple and straightforward when explained correctly. You just have to understand a handful of technical points and guidelines, and you’ll know exactly what you have to do to balance out your physique, left to right, and front to back. Oh and I do have to warn you about one thing: my audio is shit. Unfortunately my good microphone decided to stop playing nice with the program I use to record Skype interviews, and my only backup was my webcam’s terrible mic. Fortunately, I try not to talk much, so you shouldn’t get too annoyed by it. And it won’t happen again, as I have a couple of good backups now. 6:37 - How do you define a weak point? 12:14 - How do you pinpoint a weak point and what do you do about it? 18:19 - How do you progress on isolation movements? 20:29 - What is rep quality? 23:09 - How does training change based on goals? 29:29 - How does an intermediate program look? 35:41 - What are some good isolation exercises for stubborn body parts? 40:25 - What exercises do you use for guys in specialization cycles? 44:04 - What do you use for extra lat development? 45:54 - Do you vary your grip for back exercises? 55:07 - Where can people find your work? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

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Hey, hey, this is Mike, and welcome to another episode of the Muscle for Life podcast. In this episode, I interview a professional bodybuilder and coach named Alberto Nunez from the Team 3DMJ crew. He is the last on the roster, so I have now interviewed them all. And in this interview, we are going to talk about how to find and fix or how to spot and fix muscle imbalances in your physique. I thought Alberto would be the perfect guy to talk to about this because he not only talks the talk, but he walks the walk. I mean, he lives this stuff. He's an accomplished bodybuilder with an absolutely insane physique himself. And he and his team of coaches have also helped hundreds of other bodybuilders build their best physiques ever and make a career for themselves. I'm also excited to put this interview

up because it's something I get asked about all the time from both guys and girls. So I'm sure there are quite a few of you out there that could also use some help in this regard. Now, as you'll see, the whole topic of muscle imbalances is actually pretty simple and straightforward when explained correctly. You really just have to understand that a handful of technical points and guidelines, and then you know exactly what you have to do to balance out your physique left to right and front to back, which many people don't necessarily think of. Oh, and I do have to warn you about one thing. Unfortunately, my audio is shit in this interview. My good microphone decided to stop playing nice with the program that I used to record Skype interviews. And I didn't know that until we went to go record the interview. So I figured, you know, I have a, I have my only backup that I had was my webcams,

terrible mic, but I figured it would be better to just do the interview and I'll just try to like speak as little as possible, then not do it at all. So I do try to talk, you know, as little as I can. So you shouldn't get too annoyed by it. And it won't happen again because now I have two good backups, but sorry about that. Anyways, that's everything. Let's get to the interview. Alberto, thanks for coming on the podcast. Finally, we, our schedules, the stars have aligned and we're here. Yeah. We've been trying this for quite a while now. And as of today, we haven't figured it out so far. I have my fingers crossed. But yeah, no, happy to be here. Yeah, I'm happy to have you because the subject room

is always here before training, something that I get asked about fairly frequently. And it's something I've written a little bit about it. I haven't, I don't think I've ever really spoken about it much, at least I haven't dived into it like we're going to do. And I think you're someone that you're a perfect type of person to talk to us because you, quite frankly, have more experience with this than I do as a competitive bodybuilder and working with competitive bodybuilders. So I'm excited to learn a bit myself about how you go about it in with your body and with the people that you train and so forth. Yeah, yeah, this is a I think we're going to get into a few uh tangents with with other strength athletes but i think that's a good place to start is just other strength athletes and

and how you can see that i guess not everyone grows exactly the same right so maybe let's start with defining what what really when can you actually say this is my weak point because i get a fair amount of people that reach out that have been lifting for, you know, maybe three or six months and they notice that their chest seems to be lagging or it's not as growing. We're not growing as quickly as their friends or as quickly as they wanted it to, but I wouldn't necessarily say that. Oh, well there. Okay. Fine. Let's, let's, let's change everything. Let's now train chest five days a week now, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. You know, the most practical route I feel when you first decide that I'm going to start training with weights is something probably very similar to a starting strength type of program.

Right. Most of us never take that route, obviously. You know, we do all the things that are popular that you know have been time proven by the big guys right yeah and we start there and then we look back and we realize that oh wow there probably would have been a much more time efficient way to get here that's my story six or seven years of like bodybuilding bodybuilding you, magazine-type workouts without really analyzing what I was doing or why or what I was really getting out of it. It was kind of just a thing I would do, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you go with what the popular culture says is right, and, you know, at that

point, you don't really, you know, you can't distinguish what is right and what isn't. And now, when I do get my hands on a, you know, just a fresh out the box, like 15, 16 year old athlete that, you know, maybe they've been lifting for two months and it's been kind of off and on. It's like, okay, you are about to be amazed because in a year, we're going to make an amount of progress that I feel had we not had this intervention, it probably would have taken you three years to get there um so yeah i think initially uh hypothetically speaking in theory someone just fresh out the box just green you take them through something like that and almost right away or at least once the beginner uh phase is is out the way which happens quite quickly that intermediate phase is just so long but once we start poking

into into that phase you'll see that oh there's certain body parts that grow really well that you really can't explain why your calves have gotten so much bigger you know for some people just right but then there'll be other body parts that where you're like man it's it's like my arms have gotten bigger from all this pressing shoulders too but my chest is just not keeping up with everything else. So I'd say right around the intermediate phase is a good place to kind of start scouting around for what body parts are probably going to need a little bit of extra attention. And that's probably a good time and place to perhaps start adding some isolation work.

Would you agree that that's probably, I don't know, I'd say between the eight month and 12 month mark, something around there? Or do you even start looking earlier? With some people, even faster. I can think of two situations where I were 15 or 17 years old, somewhere in between there. And within a year, we were deadlifting 500 pounds for reps. Wow. That's insane. And it was just because we did everything right. Yeah. So no unnecessary wear and tear.

Yeah. It was very linear. Whenever we thought we'd get stuck, we'd take a step back and regenerate things again. But yeah, right around, yeah, I'd say six months to a year for most people. That's about as long as the beginner phase will last. Right. One thing you will notice is that with other strength athletes outside of chiefly physique athletes, they don't like to consider themselves strength athletes, but that's what they are, the physique athletes rather.

Right. When you look at Olympic lifters, for example, you will see that their training probably looks very similar. I don't think they spend too much time curling and doing lateral raises and such. But, you know, via very similar movements, they all kind of end up in different places. Like this guy has some amazing shoulders and you're like, I know you're not, you know, hitting your side delts four times a week or anything like that. Yeah. So that's where you can kind of start to distinguish that.

Oh, if you look at those sports and yeah you know we can do the same movements but people are going to respond somewhat differently right um but you also don't want to make the mistake of you know too early on focusing on something that you might think is a weak body part when in reality actually this is this is something that we should bring up is is the fact that as you're going through your beginner phase you're still green you're going through your beginner phase, you're still green, you're still new, you just might not know how to actually use those areas of your body

in the right manner. Yeah, I hear from a lot of people, like for you, I've heard from, if you've worked with a lot of people brand new, heard from a lot of guys that were new to lifting in particular, that, for example, had a hard time feeling like they were really engaging their chest through pressing or their back through pulling. Like I've heard from quite a few guys that it took a good three or four months of working at it before they really actually felt their back muscles working,

you know, in a way that they would have expected to feel it as opposed to they would feel a lot in their biceps and they eventually, you know, would feel fatigue in their back, but not the real, you know, mind muscle connection, so to speak. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, we're quick to want to add something and be proactive, but sometimes it's like, hey, let's take a step back and let's see if we can once again brush up on these basics. And I think that's very important. All other sports do it. You know, when you look at some of the drills that, you know, 10-year- year old baseball player is doing they're very similar to what the guys in the majors do you still have to brush up

on those things and make sure they stay sharp and sometimes re-evaluate the way you do things right okay so you have somebody in the beginning they're they're working mainly on their on their compound lifts depending on the program there might be some isolation work in there so now they're coming into this intermediate phase. What would you now, how would you, is this just by visual? You would say, you know, okay, let's look at your physique and how are you kind of pinpointing weak points? And then we can start talking about like, well, what do you do about it?

And then also, if you want to throw in any sort of mistakes, common mistakes that you see people making once they get to that phase like sure i mean it's a common mistake in the beginning to veer too far away from the basics like you were saying but what what are some of the things that people run into you know when it actually does start to make sense to look for adapting the training to your own body you know yeah and we'll assume that throughout the process getting to this point where we're like okay our arms are stubborn yeah that we've we've done we're doing our movements in the correct manner you know when we're rowing we're using our back and we're pressing we're using we're getting help from our chest all that stuff so with all that in place uh yeah the first place you would go to is is definitely what is missing what seems to not be growing as well.

And then entering the intermediate phase, you'll probably start off with something that's pretty symmetrical across the board in regards to how we're scattering the isolation work mostly. You try that first. Maybe you weren't doing arms more than once a week early on. Or not at all. Or not at all i mean depending on or not at all yeah yeah and now it's gotten to the point where like okay it's time to bring in all these these isolation movements into play you start off with something that's pretty symmetrical something pretty basic and generic looking and so in the case of arms meaning you might do an arm session every week that looks like some curling some close grip pressing or push downs or something like that with moderately heavy weight.

Something that looks pretty neutral and give that a go for a while. And since you are introducing new movements, I do think it's important to make sure that those movements are being done correctly. I think one of the issues with isolation movements is that ideally we're moving one or in some movements, two joints at a time, but it's very easy to get other joints involved. You know, I think we've all seen it with lateral raises, with curls, where it's very easy to get help from your ankles, your knees, your hips, your back. So I guess that that's it's kind of nice that in this case we get to break it up into we focus we focus on our main lifts first initially coming coming out of the gates and now let's bring in some new movements and like learn to master these you know you don't want to be working on too many things at once right um so you try that

master that master these movements give those a go for a while and often what does happen is that a lot of those body parts that we assume to be just weak we're just under trained yeah like i don't know about you but i see that with guys at least i see it a lot with shoulders my shoulders were always like i mean stubborn my chest always just responded well to pretty much anything i did my biceps also but i guess my arms in general so like my pressing and pulling have always been decent but my shoulders have taken a ton of work a lot of isolation work because you know you can get real strong on your overhead press but that doesn't mean you're going to have those side delts or those rear delts that really round it all out yeah yeah and it's one of those things

now where i'm sure your training looks very like not not so symmetrical like there's certain parts that you're like i don't have to curl that much I'll be fine yeah but it was a process I didn't do a curl for six months just because I actually felt my biceps were getting too big and like my shoulders couldn't like that means I need more shoulders and my shoulders are just stubborn so I stopped curling and I just was you know heavy pulling and that was enough to me I didn't lose any any arm size and that's one thing you do discover when you do break. You get into that next phase where it's like, okay, there's only so much I can do within the training cycle or training block.

There are certain things that you have to put on the back burner a bit. But before we get to that, actually, so again, we're running at this point with just very symmetrical training, like a very generic upper lower kind of split, right? Right. 70 reps per body part or around there twice a week everything is pretty much in line and then you realize that okay shoot my shoulders don't grow let's up the dose basically the dose of stimulus and that's the basic mechanism in play right it's like if you want to get if you want your muscles to get bigger and stronger you have to do more work

and you have to you have to you can't just go forever because you just be you know you run yourself into the ground but ultimately you know you're going to have to do more if you want that muscle if what you're doing right now is not getting it done and you're eating right and so forth is that kind of the basic if you just to boil it down to a simple principle is we have to figure out how to do more on that muscle group yeah and, and I think initially, and especially with isolation movements, since they're so limited in regards to how much we can actually progress. Right. We always talk about being progressive with our training. I think the first thing that people think of is adding more weight to the bar.

And for a press, for a deadlift, for a squat, that's a little bit easier to come by. But with isolation movements you know you might be curling the same way for the next two months yeah yeah yeah so you know you you're you're going to have to be extra patient but one thing when it comes to the increasing weight on those movements and often increasing weight too fast on isolation movements you know it's a recipe for for disaster for sure so what you end up doing is adding volume that's probably the most practical way of and just so everybody knows we're talking about adding reps adding reps or or even sets maybe you were doing five sets of um isolated

medial delt work and you're like let's let's let's double this sure actually just yeah doing more reps whether however you break it up into sets. But if you did 50 reps for that muscle group last week, you might do 60 this week or something like that. Yeah. So adding volume, adding a rep here and there, maybe a set here and there is probably the most practical way of improving those weak body parts. Right. And have you found, this is a question just, just, just from, from my experience, have you found though, that like, I, I feel like, I mean, I progressed on isolation

exercises and just my, like focusing on just progressive overload and getting stronger. I feel like for, for quite a while I was able now it was harder. Yeah. It's, it's, I feel like it's easier to gain five pounds in your deadlift than it is to gain five pounds on your curl. You have to work a bit harder for it. But mean I remember from in over the course of several years I remember when it used to be kind of hard to curl 45s for sets of six to eight and now I mean again I started curling again a little bit just because I kind of miss it to be honest but I'm not doing too much but when I was like really kind of going at it I was up to maybe 70 or 75 for sets of four to six or so so

it took a while but you know i don't know that's been my experience at least as opposed to just kind of sticking in 50 and trying to go for unlimited reps you know what i mean yeah uh you know subjective progress on these movements is is also a great way to go about it maybe you just you feel maybe a better contraction in those movements whereas when you first made that jump to that next set of dumbbells it was one of those things where you just didn't feel it as much yeah yeah and maybe now in your four sets of 10 you have a few more reps left in reserve whereas the first few times you barely made it there so subjective progress i think is is also a great way to go about it when it comes to those isolation movements.

Speaking of just, I guess, the user experience, you know, when you're squatting, when you're deadlifting, you know, sometimes you're just trying not to be crushed often, right? You don't necessarily always feel these movements the way you would an isolation movement. And I think that's something to definitely take into consideration that while load is a wonderful proxy for muscular tension, with the isolation movements, sometimes jumping up an increment can mean there's actually less tension placed on the targeted muscle group. So that's always something that you have to remember when you're trying to add some weight or rep there. like am i actually targeting this muscle group the way i intended to yeah and that

kind of comes back to that rep quality point that you've mentioned where there's just going through the motions they may look you know you have two versions of an exercise that look approximately the same but they're really not the same in terms of what's going on physiologically that mind muscle connection which is starting to become more popular again and i'm glad to see it uh make a comeback because i do feel it makes a huge difference yeah yeah i mean i mean you can feel it immediately if it's that difference up do you feel the muscle really working and you feel it uh contracting the way that you know as forcefully as possible and so forth or do you feel like your limbs are kind of going through a motion that doesn't involve your lats at all for example

it just makes one of those things it's like it makes too much just common sense to be completely invalid and the fact that it's been kicking around in the bodybuilding world for decades now is probably evidence enough as well exactly If people have dedicated their entire lives to figuring this kind of stuff out, yeah, they may have not had it formalized and published in a journal. There are a lot of smart people that have put a lot of time and thought into this. Yeah, and pretty soon here, I think I heard Brett Contreras talk about they're going to actually do some research where they compare having experienced lifters do a movement while focusing on

external cues versus internal cues and I really what I think is going to happen is it's going to make a huge difference and it's gonna make an even bigger difference primarily when it comes to the isolation movements whereas I can understand you know if you're going to do a deadlift correctly maybe external cues might like you know break the floor things like that yeah it might make more sense there's really only one proper way of doing a deadlift right you know for that specific person but curling i guess there's there's such a fine line when it comes to you know making a small little tweak in the movement this way or that way can make all the difference and sometimes again that makes problems disappear like weak body

parts become not so weak i can think of my calves being one of those body parts where i they're still not very good but tweaking the form has been probably the the biggest help in in my calf development whereas like the training volume has honestly not changed in years but they continue to improve because I do buy much more with that mind muscle connection when it comes to my calves, which was very hard for me. I want to hear that. I was like, yeah, I mean, genetically I had nothing in calves. Anything that I have has been like, I've had to work way too hard is how it feels for what I had. And I'm sure mine are worse than yours, but I'll ask

you after the podcast, what you did, what you did there. So, so now let's, let's shift to, this is also something common that, you know, I come across all the time. It's very relevant. So you have people that really their goals are more along the lines of bodybuilding and that, yes, they want to be strong, but they want to have a certain look and they want to have, you know, there's even, I mean, I think there's probably some validity to like quantifying it using, you know, if I were, you take different measurements and using fee, the golden ratio, it kind of gives you some ideas on how wide you want your, your, your shoulders circumference to be versus your waist and versus blah, blah, this, whatever. and versus blah blah this whatever and so you have people that that's what kind of what why they got into weightlifting on the aesthetic or visual side of things but they're training more like just doing powerlifting type of type of training and wondering why because i've come wondering why like why why are their legs and ass huge but their upper you know their shoulders

haven't really come in as much and their lats haven't come in as much where because you know those types of programs don't involve much isolation work and there's a lot of information like advice kicking around on the internet that you know you don't need to curl like you should never do a curl all you got to do is you know heavy deadlifts and you're going to get 18 inch arms and you know you never need to do a tricep push down just ohp and bench press that's it so i'm curious as to your thoughts on that and you know just how do people how should they be approaching their training in in context of their actual goals why what are they trying to achieve i think if i go back maybe 10 years ago the whole power

building thing wasn't very very popular at all yep and i can't explain to you how it it came about but eventually we can all thank him power building just became very very popular and and then you know obviously uh bodybuilders you know especially those those bodybuilders that just at this point they're willing to do anything to just get a little better especially at the intermediate phase where you know just showing up isn't showing up and training hard doesn't bring the same results that you know that when you're first starting yeah um would bring right so they looked into what powerlifters were doing and they had these really objective plans where this is what we're going to do we're going to monitor all these variables and when you think about it i mean it makes sense to approach your training in that way even

even if strength isn't your main goal. Bodybuilders have been doing this with their nutrition for years where they set up these plans. Instead of frequency, volume, and intensity, it's fat, carbs, and protein. And whenever they're stuck in whichever direction, whether it be gaining or losing, they move a few things around and boom, plateau's over. We get to continually progress. they move a few things around and boom plateaus over we get to continually progress so obviously i think powerlifters bodybuilders didn't have much experience with creating their own templates that cater to their own needs so they borrowed a lot from powerlifters and i think your first few goes at it you're going to make some great progress head to toe just because the novelty of the of

the program it's organized you're going to progress. So you'll make some progress, but then eventually it gets to the point where it just becomes too specialized. And I remember jumping on that bandwagon myself. And I think maybe about six months into it, I was like, you know what? My shoulders just don't look the same anymore. My arms are down, I think, about half an inch. So a lot of the things in the extremities last look a little bit different i just didn't have that full round bodybuilder look that i was used to but i was much stronger and now we kind of you know a few years later we kind of understand

that yeah you know these these concepts are great we can learn a lot from this but if your main goal is to improve aesthetically we're going to have to move around some things and apply a lot of the things that powerlifters have been applying to the squat, bench, and deadlift to our lats, to our hamstrings, just everything. And being able to, at least for the most part, have a good understanding of what you can do should you get stuck. Right. So, honestly, we kind of slowed down for a minute there, I feel like. We kind of... It's a good point. I just want to bring that up because I know I get asked about it.

Where people, because a lot of people, at least that I hear from, they get into weightlifting via a program like Starting Strength or Strong Lifts. And then they do that for a bit. And I'll just hear from people that then they're not, they feel like their physique isn't going in the direction that they want. Like they're happy with things are much better and they've gotten a lot stronger and they're happy with that. But, you know, they can see that again with guys, it's, it's, it's usually lats lagging, shoulders lagging a lot of times chest as well, but lower body bigger than they necessarily, they feel like they need like 70% of their progress in their lower body and like 30% of their progress in upper body arms are not what they want. So that's why I think it's just a good, a good quick little tangent because it is basically they're,

they're creating their own weak points in a sense, because that's not those programs are for whole body strength. So you can press, pull, and squat. It's not so you can have pretty delts or pretty lats or pretty biceps. Yeah. And, and, you know, I think, I mean, now we know, now we know that, Hey, that's not enough, but there was a point in time where I was kind of folded, you know, basically, you know, if I do a lot of the big compound movements, it's going to take care of everything else. And that's just certainly not the case. I think I ran about five continuous, they're called shiko cycles. Depends on who you ask.

But it was fun and it was quite an educational experience. And I use it to this day when I program for my bodybuilding. It's just that the work is obviously scattered a bit differently. Another tangent, actually, you will see a friend of mine lane norton if you look at his pictures prior to powerlifting dude had some of the like most ridiculous looking arms especially for a natural bodybuilder and he found out he was really good at this powerlifter thing focused on that for a few years and like what you described you could see a few body parts were grown, but then the other things kind of got left behind.

So what can we take from these strength programs? It's just the fact that it's important to control for the variables that we need to in order to have a solid resistance training program. And that's going to be the volume, the frequency, the intensity, knowing where those things are at. And then again, scattering the volume in a way that makes sense based on your own personal goals. Totally. And how might that look?

I mean, obviously, this is very personalized and something that's hard to give a one-size-fits-all. It's very easy. Like in my work, the programs that I, basic programs I have for men and women, it's easy to give a program that has you squat, deadlift, press, OHP every week and adding some isolation work. And then guys focus a little bit more on your upper body than your lower body with girls, vice versa. And that's good. I think it's a great place for anybody to start a kind of a power bodybuilding approach, like you were saying, or power building approach. power bodybuilding approach, like you were saying, or power building approach. But then, okay, so we're at the point now where in some cases, I mean, again, I've also heard from quite a few people that didn't need to do really anything else, not plugging my own stuff,

but didn't need anything really beyond like a good basic strength program with some isolation accessory work tacked onto it. And they just had good genetics and they didn't get hurt and they did everything right. And, you know, look at them. I mean, it's hard to even find anything wrong with their physiques. But those aren't, I would say those are the outliers, at least to some degree. So how does it start? How does it look where you have somebody, let's assume they understand the fundamentals of strength training and they've gotten good at that.

But I guess we could break it down by gender even. What have you seen in terms of, we can look at guys and girls separately. And just to address some of the common issues that I know the listeners, like some guy right now is sitting there going, my shoulders are too small. What do I do? My lats are too small.

What do I do? My chest or a girl saying, my butt isn't the way that I want it to be, or my arms aren't quite there, my legs and so forth. And how do you kind of program that? Or what would be some examples? Well, of course, initially, just something basic. Let nature do its its thing you might get one of those freaks where it's like wow we have done

minimal rowing but you have a terrace major that like looks like my bicep you know um fine then you know that lucky you right um but that's usually not the case then you get to the intermediate phase where it's like okay now we really have to tack on some more volume and kind of just scatter volume and all those body parts that won't get as much love from the beginner phase right and again that's going to look very generic very similar across the board and then you try that you try to progress as much as you can with that for a while and then some body parts hey they actually come out and play you're like ah look at that i actually have biceps now now they're doing more than just plenty of rowing so it's just for example you might have someone let's say they're doing their

back proper they're doing their rowing they're pulling on one day and then a few days later they're doing in this case it could be some curling for example maybe i'd say a good place to start is twice a week frequency because that's about where you will be most of your training career so hitting body parts twice a week yeah i would say they're hitting body parts that you want to continue progressing on though like i've also heard from people or they're they say like especially girls they don't want any more in a certain area of their body should they still be doing you know if they don't want i've heard from for example swimmers that they they don't want more back so should they still be doing you know should be training back twice a week no no it's yeah i wouldn't recommend that if you don't if you

want like you're trying to keep it the way it is then you know there's no reason to just you know um be a slave to oh i should just be training everything twice a week yeah yeah no if you identify a body part is highly gifted or highly unwanted for whatever reason right like i i know a few guys you know because you know how calves are both you and i know how calves are some people just have them some people don't who they don't train calves because they can't get their knee sleeves on. You know? I know another guy like that. Dude, people come up to him in the gym, bodybuilder types, maybe guys,

and they'll ask him how the fuck he got his calves because they're ridiculous. They're straight bicep status calves. And he's never trained them once. He's like, I don't know. I was fat for like a long time. And that's it. That's it. Walking on planet earth yeah yeah so yeah you can definitely trim off some volume i'd say in the intermediate phase but i think what most people find themselves doing is having to add more like once you you go with a program that's pretty symmetrical and then you're like

shoot still not working still not working let's more. So you add more volume there. And where I think we start to do some things that might be kind of counterintuitive is when we start to really just take away from the body parts that, okay, for sure, we know they grow well. It's not a fluke. And that's what I would call more of a specialization cycle because there's only so much of you to go around in regards to physical recovery and even like mental recovery you can't i've tried it i've committed very short term to programs that did everything and that never works out like seven days a week hour and a half a day you know uh yeah we have like i guess glutes are a big one where people

do like four different movements for for glutes and it's like, don't do that until you're sure you have to get there. So the final step would be, and this is something that's somewhere in the middle towards the late part of the intermediate phase, you start to strip off volume from other body parts that just seem to grow no matter what. And it's going to allow those other body parts that just are not progressing the way you'd like to you know sneak in a little bit more progress one thing you will find out though is that those body parts that you don't intend to grow they have such a especially for some people they have said they're so sensitive to stimulus that they grow even better that whatever was i guess the textbook recommendation for say your biceps if anything was slowing down the rate at which they progress and you backed off a little bit and you're like wow now they're growing better because there's there's such high responders to training um yeah that i've had that happen for example with my quad with my quads where i've

continually continuously over the years i've been dropping the volume dropping the volume and there's still the body part that grows at the most astonishing rate relative to everything else. But yeah, the last leg is probably that and I think it's hard for a lot of people to back off when it comes to the body parts that grow quite well because it's fun to train things that you're really good at. Yeah. Totally. Okay, so then what are some examples of isolation exercises that you like to add for bringing up certain body parts? What are some good choices for the common, stubborn body parts? You brought up gender-specific issues, and I think one thing that happens often with women is that they don't yearn to be as progressive when it comes to their resistance training. Whereas when you get a male trainee, if anything, if a dude has jumped up 50% in his curls over the last six weeks,

you're going to be like, I need to see those curls because I don't think they're curls anymore. With women, it's, I think, very important to make them hungry to progress, to get stronger. And I think once they see just how well progressive overload works they'll be more hooked on that notion and that's one of the main reasons that the barbell are glue thrust it's a wonderful movement and it makes sense but I think one of the reasons that it's it's become so popular and so

many people swear by it is because here you have this very simple barbell movement which is again because the barbell movement it's a lot more practical to continuously load over time yeah and and you have these women like just anxious to progress and boom you have body parts that improve so i think for for women uh when addressing those weaker body parts body parts that they perhaps don't like the way they look it's important to really get them to buy into the hey we need to progress because often even those body parts that they might be a bit confused as to why it looks that way they might think that what we need to do is reduce it but often the answer is like no no

if we put some muscle there yeah it's going to really help contour the area and you'd be surprised as to how much better it's going to look even if we kept the state at about the same body fat. Right. Totally. And then of course there's, speaking of body fat, then once they see the real interaction between gaining muscle and really just body composition, they see how that works, then they're not afraid of getting bulky anymore because they know it's all in their control. I mean, if they are going to hang out around 20% body fat, then it's going

to be very hard to ever look bulky. It's going to take a lot of work. If they want to hang out around 25 or higher, then it's going to be easier. So, you know, at least they can make the choice. Yes. I would say that for most drug-free lifters and especially women, it's going to be very hard to look bulky if you have your body fat under control. Totally. If it's bulky, it's because it's just a diet thing. Totally, totally. So we have the hip thrust for bringing up glutes.

Any other specific isolation exercises that you like to use with women? I mean, obviously, I don't know how it's been for you. The majority of women that I've heard from, they want to do something about, it's usually lower body or more arms those those tend to be the two things yeah yeah and women tend to hold whole body fat typically in their limbs um so you know you have to take them through a few fat loss phases to sell them on the notion that hey it's more about just diet until it all looks right right is there any other lower body type isolation exercises that

you like to use with women or is it mainly sticking to compounds and then just adding, you know, stuff for the glutes as needed? Yeah, I think sticking to the compounds is where you go first. And if that doesn't work, then perhaps, yeah, we might have to look into some sort of specialization type cycles and, you know back extensions with uh or rather hip extensions but they look more like they look more like back extensions on a 45 degree uh bench those are those are wonderful glute thrust things like that but i think with women the main thing is selling them on being progressive with with movements and again it's counterintuitive it's like but my butt is like why am i going to do

why am i going to lift weights because they automatically assume that it's just going to inflate uh that area even even further yeah so glute thrusts have been have been wonderful i think in regards to giving something giving giving them something to look forward to because it seems very proactive and and then also because it's quite easy to progress and i think for anyone even if their goal wasn't to get stronger once you get that feeling of being stronger and who doesn't want to be strong right yeah that becomes part of the the yeah the thrill yeah so with women i definitely would say it's it's more about just getting them to grind away with men if, especially with isolation movements in the body parts that men tend to want more of,

if anything, it's like, hey, I think we do better if we left our ego at the door and actually focused on curling correctly, tricep extensions correctly, using our lats when we row, that sort of stuff. Right, totally. So to that point, what are some of the exercises you like to use with guys when you're doing these specialization cycles? I would say that the delt thing is actually quite common. And delt is almost one of those body parts where you can't have enough of those. Like I don't hear many, like hardly anyone's ever complaining about how big their delts were and are and how they wish they would atrophy a bit no yeah um so teaching people to do lateral raises correctly i think it's

a it's a big one what are the key points there key points i would say for sure being extra patient with how you progress i think and again I'm a slightly different situation because I've been training for 15 years, 16 almost now. And so I'm very close to my ceiling, but this two year off season where it's been focused on putting on muscle, I think I've added maybe two and a half pounds to my lateral raise and the six to eight rep range. it's very slow it's very very slow and besides the fact that it's really slow i would say that a big thing for lateral raises is is certainly i think holding it at the top because it's a great way to ensure that the muscles that that you're targeting is what got it here if you were using your legs if you were using your hips etc you won't be able to

hold it up for a second so yeah have you tried doing single like like hanging where you're have you ever tried that i've tried single arm stuff and hanging as well i like it for people who don't know how to contract that body part because what it does is shifts the focus even more so to just that one area yeah um so it's a great teaching yeah i found it helpful for me just to take any swing out of it and i mean i do actually i'm now i'm back to two arms now but i was doing single for a while just because i felt like i could progress faster on it i mean again it was slow progression but just because i feel like the quality of the reps were better over time that

just equaled better progression yeah yeah you can control what is actually progress i felt like i was almost getting artificially stuck at a lower weight just because i wasn't coordinating my my my two arm raises properly so it's not like a clumsy guy i don't know it's just something i tried and i was like well hey this seems to be working a little better. I'm going to do this for a bit. And I know what you mean because, you know, you weren't training those muscles as efficiently as you wanted to. So they weren't actually getting stronger. So you took a moment, took a step back.

They get stronger and you're like, oh, wow, we're back to where we were. And sometimes even beyond that. But, yeah, for the lateral raise, I would say hold it at the top. And then also a big one. But the way you do it is it makes it a little bit easier. Like the hanging at an angle like that is you don't want to go all the way down because the first few degrees, what that's going to do is actually it's your rotator working. So that's why instinctively when we get tired on a lateral raise, we kind of let them come down a little bit more because we get that elasticity from the rotator. And it's a lot easier to, you know, bring them back up.

So I like to stop right about navel area. But the way you do them, it kind of does that by default. So, yeah, I'd say start with single arm, holds at the top, and be very, very, very patient with your progress. A lot of it will have to be subjective yeah increasing rep quality and then you can always i mean i've also liked i don't know if i'm sure you've done it but i've found that like rest pause type sets uh have been very helpful with with shoulder training in particular time efficient too yeah very time efficient yeah yeah um okay cool so that's shoulders have you found like with lats for example i i've heard

from tons of guys i myself i feel like my lats took an inordinate amount of work to get to anywhere to where i felt like they were proportionate with my upper body ascent or with my you know chest and shoulders what are what are your favorite like uh isolation exercises for lats you know i think we'll start with the basics there and i think basics and lats people think of pull-ups but i think with pull-ups most people tend to fall for those they tend to use those external cues like um get into that bar i much prefer i rather prefer i prefer a pull down i prefer a pull down and one of a great quote that i i took from one of my favorite strength coaches ever, Dan John, is that the lat pulldown, that cable should never have to be replaced. Like it should never have to be replaced. And that's something that these last few years I've taken with me. It's a very smooth,

controlled motion where I'm focusing on the muscle groups that I'm trying to target with, again, holds at the peak contraction because it serves as a checkpoint that yeah I got it here using the right muscles where is like if I didn't swing it somehow exactly like you you'll know if every every time you pause and you hold it for two Mississippi count you will see that okay I'm in the exact same position by the time you get to reps 9 or 10 11 on a hard set of like 8 to 12 You'll see that you start to kind of get out of position a little bit Yeah, and that's where you know, you start to experience what I feel is actually true failure, which is technical failure

so so yeah, I would say pull downs for sure and Be make love to the cable and with good holds at the at the end position and the same kind of goes for horizontal rows as well as same thing if you can't hold it at the end then chances are it's too much weight for you and do you like to do both uh would you like to vary your grip so like you're doing let's say your your pull downs might be on a wider grip your horizontal might be on a more narrow if you found that to be helpful. Or vice versa or whatever. I mean, or do you not change it at all?

You know, I think at some point I did until I found where that right place is for me. And that will vary from person to person. There's certain places where maybe your biceps might be in a better line of pull. And then they're taking a bit more from your back than you would like. So, yeah, experiment with a few different grips. Find the ones that work for you. The only reason I ever change my grips is simply for the sake of avoiding wear and tear. But for the most part, once you kind of have a movement down, you want to keep doing that movement so that you don't have to change a movement

and like relearn something and then master that one. Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. Have you liked standing like lat push downs at all kind of an awkward stature size you know where like you so so you're you're up and you're going like this oh yeah yeah yeah it's like a it's like a pullover but with a cable yeah yes so those those are that movement's gone so out of style in recent years. It's such an effect. It's talking about like, that's purely what the lat does. It's just, it's all lat. I did those. I did a ton of those when I was like, when I was looking at pictures myself, I was like, my lats are too fucking small. I got to do something. So I was doing a lot of those

in addition to pulling and rowing and so forth. And it really helped. I feel like that was probably one of the best exercises for just pure lat stimulation. And talk about a great lat activation movement. It's maybe a good way to – actually, I've used that movement to start my back days because it just kind of – it sets up that mind-muscle connection. Even if I fatigued it a little bit prior to doing maybe a bit more of the i guess compound movements where my biceps are working it just it sets me up for success the rest of the day which is another i think fine point that we we kind of forgot about when it

comes to the the specialization of certain body parts to an extent maybe they should go early on in your day it should be it should be maybe the first thing you do. So maybe if you have tremendous quads, I don't think in certain cases it'd be out of order to start with hamstring curls. Yeah, totally. Yeah, and that's also one of the reasons why, on the flip side with new people, why it's smart to start with your heavy compounds

that are going to give you the most bang for your buck. Do those first when you have the most energy. And when you also are just mentally up to it, as opposed to, you know, maybe exerting, maybe draining yourself by 30% doing other stuff. And now you're going to get to your heavy deadlifts. That's just all around worse. But in this case, that's a good point where you might want to come in

and start on the specific thing that you're working on. And then, you know, maybe your deadlift does is your second exercise, but there's a reason for it. Yeah, it used to be just a big no-no for me to do back before I press. But now that's how it goes. That's how it goes. It's like I don't care if my platform for pressing is a little fatiguing. My chest is okay relative to the situation in my back. So, yeah, I think order of exercises is highly underrated.

Totally. Well, great. I think we've covered a lot. Is there anything else that's kind of floating around that you feel that needs to be discussed on the whole thing? I think the body parts, we talked about arms. It's pretty straightforward. It's kind of, are there any tricep exercises in too? I mean, curling, you know, you can do sweats, you can bicep curl, you can dumbbell curl watch your bicep curl you can dumbbell curl you can hammer curl you can cable curl you can close grip pull up i don't know is there really anything else you can do i'd say maybe for triceps like being aware that you have a long head and it doesn't get much love from the pressing so yeah you know getting some long head movements for the tricep there and what are are your two or three favorite movements for that? I like a simple just

overhead single arm dumbbell. That way, you know, both AC joints kind of get to do their own thing. You'll notice that, you know, one elbow is kind of shifted slightly differently and a lot of elbow pain actually comes from issues in your shoulders. So I have found that to work quite well. But yeah, that's probably the, when it comes to anything like arms and delts. Those are probably the main movements. It's just lateral raises. I don't feel that big delts have ever, outside of a few people, been built off pressing. They're just kind of making sure that humor stays where it needs to be.

So that, the dumbbell curls or just any curl variation of choice, making sure you don't cheat. Triceps, make sure you hit the long head. But one final note, I guess, on like these weak body parts is that there was a lot of body parts that prior to me getting into really good shape at some point, I thought were weak body parts. And then it's funny, once you take off a layer of that fat, you're like, oh, wow. My calves actually look okay when they're lean and the same thing i think especially for women it's like it's true you're not as bulk as you think if you trim some of that body fat off you'll see that you actually look a lot better than you're giving yourself credit for so and that's i actually found it typically true

as shoulders as well if you're because you, they kind of lose their identity when, when there's too much body size, just kind of becomes like your whole arm is just kind of amorphous almost. And then, you know, you start getting down as far as a guy, you start getting down to maybe around 10% or something around there. And all of a sudden,

you know, you can, you can see that you can see your, your, your, your shoulder capping and you can see where it kind of cuts in and there's your bicep. and all of a sudden your shoulders don't look so bad anymore.

It's funny because it's the same thing we've been telling a lot of us male trainers. We tell our female trainees, if you get leaner, it's going to look better. That's really what it comes down to. But we see it all the time. Yeah, same thing here. When I'm in the off season, it's like I lose my pecs and abs

become one thing. Yeah. I get the same thing. Yeah. here when I'm in the off season it's like I lose like my pecs and abs become one thing yeah my chest gets very round like I you know the off the awesome chest is the flat squared and yeah I feel like I have to be so lean just to have a semblance of that whereas you know if I'm just not uh I don't even really get all i don't have a i don't i'm not a competitor so i don't have an off season per se i try to stay fairly lean throughout the year but even that like if i'm not shredded my chest just starts to round and it starts i don't know i mean we're also our worst critics of course yes but you know that's because we look at our ourselves every day and just kind of pick ourselves apart but i know you mean yeah so one other thing that may be worth mentioning is um with legs and the ice applies both to men and

women i think equally is i don't know if you've seen this but i've seen that a lot of people they do a lot of quad dominant work and they don't do very much hamstring specific work so they'll do they'll be doing a lot of lunges, a lot of squats and so forth. And of course, involve the hamstrings when you're doing it, right? And that's bad for your knees and bad just especially if you're an athlete and it sets you up for injuries and so forth. But then I think also aesthetically, there's something to be said there that I've seen a lot of people with impressive quads, but their hamstrings, they don't do hamstring curls. I mean, I like RDLs and hamstring curls are the two that i do the most of

but you know i've made that a point i've inserted that into a lot of people's stuff saying you know i like the squats i like the front squats i like all that but you know let's add a hamstring exercise every week as well let's make sure that your hamstrings are at least we're trying to balance between quad and hams yeah yeah and you know part of your hamstring curls your leg up and some other muscle groups extend your hip so it's important that like the way you're doing it where you have your romanian deadlifts and then you have your hamstring curls and that's truly a complete hamstring program which yeah again i think there would probably probably be a listener or two then perhaps skips on certain body parts and i know

that for me when i started it was about the chest like i wanted the chest yeah and then i was like hey you know what would go really well with the chest shoulders yeah yeah for me it was biceps of course you know you start to add things and then you're like you know what when i turn around i don't look like i lift let me add something there um so so you know eventually you're going to want to train everything so if you're listening and you're not it probably would be a good time especially those body parts that are not as popular right absolutely okay cool well i think that's a pretty extensive i think we've covered just

about everything that can be covered in in a general kind of discussion on the topic yeah yeah and hopefully the listeners got something out of that. But yeah, I guess in a nutshell, I'd say just be patient, especially with your isolation work, and that it is really important, but it's also something that... It just takes time. It takes time. And there's a reason why, if you really have found a weak point in your physique,

there's a reason why it's a weak point. It's it's stubborn muscle i mean for me my chest and biceps all they grew quickly but my i'd say everywhere else in my body took quite my quads were decently they responded pretty well too but everything else took quite a bit of work and that's just the way it is here we here we are mike you and, we still wear long socks, right? That's right. We're, you know, pants to the gym. All right. So one of the last thoughts is where can people find you? Let's see. You also obviously are a coach with the team 3D Muscle Journey. So if you want to just give a quick plug on you, your work, what do you have, any projects

that you are in the middle of you want people to know about? Yeah. So 3D Muscle Journey, that's my squad. That's's my team 3dmusclejourney.com is a website you can find us on youtube as well team 3dmj and we have a podcast ourselves and it caters mostly to just contemporary bodybuilding issues and a few other just spontaneous topics that are pretty interesting from time to time you can find myself and the rest of the coaches on Instagram as well. And those are the avenues in which we're most active. And we try to do a good job of mixing it up,

having fun with our lifting, with our social media, but then also trying to be as informative and also live the lifestyle. That's the thing we're really sold on. We absolutely love this as much as I think anyone who's listening to this podcast, and I do think it shows. That's great. Awesome. So that's everything. Thanks again for coming on to talk.

And, you know, you're the last of the 3DMJ crew. I've interviewed you all now. So I know that I've been getting a lot of good feedback. People really like the interviews. So I'm sure they really like this one as well. Also considering that it is something people have been asking for. So here it is. Awesome. Thank you. My pleasure. I really enjoyed it. Yeah. Thanks again. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general

wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day. Actually, I release kind of four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.