If you want to succeed in the world must make your own opportunities as you go on. The man who waits for some seventh wave to toss him on dry land will find that the seventh wave is a long time a coming. You can commit no greater folly than to sit by the roadside until some one comes along and invites you to ride with him to wealth or influence.
John B. Gough
Age: 27
Location: Monument, Colorado
Weight Off-Season: 180
Weight Contest: 170
Occupation: Firefighter EMT
Professionally- Valedictorian of my fire academy
Martial Arts – 1st degree Black Belt in Chinese Kempo with 20 years of competitive experience. I started at age 7, I have won numerous state championship titles and 1 world championship title.
I am currently undefeated in my class both in bodybuilding and the physique division!
2011 –
NPC Colorado Northern (my first show)-
Novice lightweight bodybuilding- 1st Place
Open lightweight bodybuilding- 1st Place
Novice Bodybuilding Overall Champion
NPC Colorado Southern
Open lightweight bodybuilding- 1st Place
Open Bodybuilding Overall Champion
NPC Colorado Open Natural
Open welterweight bodybuilding- 1st Place
Winner of the BSN Finish First Transformation Contest
2012-
NPC Colorado State
Men’s Open Physique class A- 1st Place
-2013 Colorado Firefighter Calendar Model- Benefits go the Children’s Hospital.
http://www.facebook.com/Colorado.Firefighter.Calendar – Click Here
Staying fit in the fire service is part of the job. I definitely take it to the extreme. I always have been interested in doing a bodybuilding competition, but it wasn’t until 2011 that I finally pulled the trigger and decided to get on stage.
I train moderate and heavy weight with pretty high volumes. I leave the gym without anything left in me!
A dream come true!!! I’ve been reading all the muscle magazines since high school. The thought never even came into my head that I would ever be in a muscle magazine. It didn’t sink in until they flew me out to Florida for the photo shoot. Seeing it actually printed still give me goose bumps!
Get BSN Hyper FX for $20.66 at the Intense Fitness Store – Click Here
It was time for me to get back in shape for myself, my daughter, and my coworkers. There’s no reason I should be out of shape. I need to keep up with a toddler and also take care of business in a fire.
I cut out sugar, even dairy and fruit. This drastically cut down my body fat. I kept my protein high and cycled my carbohydrate intake. My main sources of carbs come from: oats, brown rice, and sweet potatoes.
Egg whites, oatmeal, chicken, tilapia, veggies and brown rice. Some budget cuts have taken steak out of my diet, but I’ll get it back one day. Most important is that I make sure my daughter is taken care of first!
I’m going to stay photo ready for the next year. (Again don’t need excess food bills for a bulking phase!) I’m hitting weights 4 times a week and 6 x 45minute cardio sessions. This with a clean diet has allowed me to stay full and lean.
I loved the BSN supplements stack before I even won their transformation. My stack was Syntha-6 protein, Amino X, N.O. Xplode 2.0. I also take fish oil, vitamin C, and multi vitamin. My newest addition to my BSN supplements stack, is Hyper Shred. It’s their new fat burner. Keeps my energy up and I’m staying lean.
I do 6 sessions a week. I train HIIT cardio about 99% of the time. Stair mill is what works best for me.
Get your diet and training plan figured out and then stick to it!! You can’t build a house without a blueprint (well a good house I guess).
“Real leaders are ordinary people with extraordinary determination.”
The next year will be about staying in photo shape and raising as much money as we can for the Colorado Children’s Hospital with the Colorado Firefighter Calendar events and sales. As of now I only have one more photo shoot with BSN the end of September. I plan on hitting the national stage as a physique athlete sometime in 2013.
Would love to connect with fans on Facebook! www.facebook.com/CharlesDKeller
Thank you!
When it comes to weightlifting technique, there are disagreements. Some are legitimate, some are questionable, and a few are downright silly. But when you sift through it all, there are a few universal Truths when it comes to the snatch and clean. If you can make these following six things happen with a given technical style, you can probably make it work for you.
This is pretty simple. If the balance of the system doesn’t remain over the feet, the combined weight of the bar and lifter will not be supported by the base and it will fall over. This is basically an average measure—the actual balance over the foot isn’t exactly the same throughout a given lift, but it must end up being essentially balanced on average. If it diverges too much at any given point, it will be more than the lifter can compensate for, and the result will be the entire system being pulled forward or backward out of balance. There is actually a bit of latitude here. It’s possible to perform a snatch or clean with a backward or even forward jump as long as you can re-establish the balance over the newly positioned base. However, there is a limit to how much this can be done, and any degree of horizontal movement, in particular in a forward direction, makes the stabilization of the bar more difficult.
This seems pretty obvious like Truth One, but this Truth is violated so commonly that it warrants emphasis. I like to illustrate this point by asking people what they would do if I asked them to pick up a barbell and then rolled it away from them. Everyone either answers that they would walk up to the bar or roll the bar back to themselves—in this extreme example, no one fails to recognize that the closer the bar is, the easier it is to lift. When we’re talking about a more complex movement like the snatch or clean, the effect of distance between the bar and body is magnified; that is, extremely small distances can create big problems. I prefer to have the barbell as close to the lifter as possible without making contact until the appropriate point of contact during the final explosion effort (hips for the snatch, high upper thigh for the clean), but would rather have it in light contact earlier than be considerably distant.
You can argue about either the elevation of the bar or the pull under the bar being more important than the other, but you can’t deny that any time spent in an extended position following the point of producing maximal acceleration is limiting the lifter’s ability to relocate under the bar. That is, whether you want to focus on lifting the bar or getting under it (or, a novel idea, both…), you have to transition between accelerating the bar upward and accelerating the body downward as quickly as possible.
The pull or push under the bar must be as aggressive as the attempt to accelerate it upward. In effective lifting, there is no falling, dropping or catching. There is pulling, pushing, squatting and splitting—the relocation of the lifter under the bar is just as active as the rest of the lift, and a lack of aggression in this phase of the lift will ensure a lifter fails to maximize his or her potential.
You can argue with regard to the snatch or jerk about how many degrees of internal or external rotation of the humerus is correct, what the shoulder blades should be doing, and how the hands should be holding the bar, but all that matters is that you establish the position that best allows you to support the weight and stand up with it. This position will vary somewhat among lifters based on anatomical peculiarities, flexibility, etc. The rack position of the clean similarly will look different among lifters, but in any case, the bar must be supported securely on the trunk, not in the hands and arms, and the position must allow optimal posture in the squat position.
No two athletes lift exactly the same way. Some use the same basic style, but every lifter has his or her own technical idiosyncrasies for better or worse. In the long term, it’s more important that a lifter perform the lifts as consistently as possible relative to him- or herself than it is to perform the lifts with a certain technical style (assuming the style is within the range of acceptable). If a lifter is much better with an emphasis on hip extension, his snatch or clean will look different than a lifter who is better at producing a powerful downward punch of the legs along with the hip explosion. If those styles are truly what works best for each lifter, each lifter is maximizing his ability and attempts to mimic another technical style will limit that ability to lift as much as possible. Each lifter should strive to optimize the technique that proves to be most effective, and then make that optimized technique second nature through high volumes of practice and training over time. Read Hips, Meet Bar for more on this.
Muscle building supplements for weight lifting – Click Here
Age: 22 years old
Location: Fort Worth, Texas
Weight Off-Season: 200-210lbs offseason
Weight Contest: 174 contest
Occupation: Loan Service Specialist (JP Morgan Chase)
Achievements: 1st place teen and collegiate lightweight champ(2009). 2010 NPC jr. USA 1st place welterweight champ. 2012 NPC Branch Warren 1st place middleweight champ. 2012 NPC USA 8th place middleweight division.
I’ve always lifted weights but at first I never really took it that seriously. I would just occassionaly lift after school with the other guys to try to be a little bigger and look better, but never ate, rested, knew what I was doing as far as my nutrition goes. It wasn’t until I met the right people who saw the potential I had in my physique, where I realized that if I worked hard enough I could one day look as good as the guys I saw in the muscle magazines.
My philosophy as far as training goes, is to always lift heavy all the way throughout my prep. I hardly change my rep ranges or even count reps when im in the gym. Your lats or quads could care less if your doing 300lbs for 15 or 50 pounds for 15. I just get in the gym and pound it out with good form until I can’t anymore.
I feel as far as supplementation goes, it is always good to have some sort of edge. Your body goes through so much day in and day out in the gym and it would help big time if there was some sort of supplementation to compliment a good food regimen. As a Betancourt Nutrition sponsored athlete, I believe that their products say exactly what they are going to do. I can’t leave the house without my D-Stunner (a preworkout mix taken right before my workouts) as well as my reaccelerator (post workout mix). I also believe that a solid protien drink, bcaa’s, omega 3′s, creatine, and multivitamins are a must for the athlete trying to take things to the next level.
My diet is very simple. We follow a simple carb cycling process which basically means we adjust my carb intake throughout the week according to how my body looks and responds to them. My diet will last about 12 weeks leading up to a contest. We will start with a very high caloric intake and gradually drop to little to nothing as we get really close to the show.
I do follow a pretty strict offseason diet of high caloric, high protien whole foods throughout the day. However a hamburger and fries is definently not off limits every now and then.
Post training nutrition to me is extremely important. Directly after my training session I use my reaccelerator and phosflex by Betancourt Nutrition on the way home from training. About 30 to 45 minutes later I eat my post workout meal usually with a scoop of my Big Blend (Betancourt nutrition protien shake).
Right now my training routine is fairly simple. For the next year leading up to the 2013 USA’s I will be working on adding overall size while keeping my waist small. I have a one body part a day split which will help me focus on these areas that need to be addressed.
I’ve never done offseason cardio until now. In the past i would hate to get my body weight so high that its hard to move and tie my shoes. I didn’t like that at all. I started recently doing cardio in the offseason and noticed how much better i felt and how much longer my pumps lasted in the gym. I got better workouts and all around felt good throughout. the day. During my precontest I do cardio up until 2 or 3 days leading up until the contest.
My advice I would give anyone just starting out is to be patient and stay focused and encouraged. This sport can sometimes seem tough at times and you may have your moments like you want to throw in the towel but I encourage you to stay focused and surround yourself with positive people who want to help you succeed in your goals. Always remember at the end of the day to have fun and love what you do.
I feel the biggest sacrifice I’ve made in this support is financially. This can be a very expensive and demanding sport which requires alot of maintanence and can be tough with a limited budget. I continue to work because I know one day this will all be worth it.
“Professional athletes are in many ways our culture’s holy men. They give themselves over to a pursuit, endure great privation and pain to actualize themselves at it and enjoy a relationship to perfection that we admire, reward and love to watch, even though we have no desire to walk that road ourselves. In other words, they do it “for” us, sacrifice themselves for our (we imagine) redemption”. – David Foster Wallace.
My future plans are to turn professional and be a great 212 pro and hopefully one day compete for a top spot on that olympia stage.
I can be reached on Facebook (Chris Hunte) or by email (Arcapella321@aol.com).
What’s your goal for a given set during a muscle building workout? Is it to lift the weight up as many times as possible? Is it to pile on maximal poundage and see if you can lift it?
The answer is bodybuilding is about training muscles, not lifting weights. Your goal should be to achieve the highest quality of muscle contraction on every rep of every set.
Here are a few ways to do that:
To ensure a quality contraction start out on an exercise using a very light weight, concentrating on your form and how the muscles feel during the movement. Slowly add more weight set after set. If and when you get to a point where you can no longer feel the muscles working as they did when the weight was lighter, you’re probably working too heavy and need to take some weight off until that “feel” is reestablished.
Biomechanics experts often speak of being at a mechanical advantage, the position at which a lever, or in our case a muscle, is at its strongest for a given movement and thus can perform the task easier. Bodybuilders, however, should seek the opposite. For example, the more you bend your elbows on a flye or lateral raise, the easier it will be to lift the weight. But when you extend your elbows to the point where they’re just slightly bent, the pecs and middle deltoids, respectively, are forced to work harder and will grow that much larger.
I am sure you have discovered already, the more slowly you do an exercise, the harder it is. So slowing the speed of a given exercise on both the concentric and eccentric phases is another way to achieve optimal contraction.
That isn’t to say that you should do every exercise in super slow motion, but performing your reps more deliberately and in a controlled motion can be helpful if you’re in a training rut and need to get back on track.
Used by bodybuilders for years as a means of increasing intensity in their workouts, peak contraction involves squeezing your muscles at the top of every rep for 1-2 seconds. Be forewarned: You likely won’t be able to do as many reps with this technique, provided it’s new to you.
I’d never tell you to abandon dumbbells and barbells completely in favor of cable equipment, but the constant tension on your muscles they offer will maximize the quality of each contraction. Every once in a while, do a workout using nothing but cables.
For results, the quality of your muscle contractions is paramount. Now take this advice to the gym and turn every rep into a growth opportunity.
Combine these new tips with best workout supplements is sure proof plan to get you new muscle mass packed on your frame!
References:
http://www.muscleandfitness.com/
http://www.flexonline.com/
COPYRIGHT 2010 Weider Publications
COPYRIGHT 2010 Gale Group