I hear that all the time and even Arnold said that in his first autobiography when he compared himself to Franco. Your muscles are going to develop according to you genetic predisposition. Nobody trained heavier than Coleman and he had a pop that no one else had just by sheer muscle size.
WRONG.
I will do my best to elaborate- i recall watching the mr olympia had to be 96 on espn way back in the day and joe amato commented on coleman saying "hes as big as texas!" But after commented that he only stood out when he was flexing or maybe the other commentator did i dont recall.
Fast forward a bit and you see coleman dominating but why? He wasnt THAT much bigger.
The difference was he changed things up and looked bigger standing relaxed. This got him noticed standing in the lineup and he got his just due.
Fast forward again to 2003 and you see again when Ronnie went back to lifting super heavy he increased the size of his foundation and looked more dominating standing relaxed. He realized gunter was taller and along with Ruhl Ronnie was risking being beaten by bigger guys. Look at the gnc show of strength.
Coleman dominated because of both his heart and his mind. I dont know who taught him bodybuilding training but that person is a genius. Coleman developed a near perfect routine, one that i am attempting to duplicate. It works like this you split your training up so one workout focuses on strength and by consequence foundation the other is a pure bodybuilding workout.
Example chest starts with barbell day. Flat benches incline benches decline benches. 3 days later dumbell presses flat incline sometimes decline and flyes.
The difference also was the rep ranges. On barbell day 6-8 range dumbell day nothing less than 10 ever. 12-15 most of the time. And im talking 12 to failure which is super hard to do. You are working hard to rAnywayeach failure at 12 clean reps.
Dorian yates tried to create the perfect routine and he got close but his routine stalled on him because of a simple concept- muscle size is dependant on increasing strength. No two ways about it.
So dorian compensated by lifting super super heavy down to 6 reps on most lifts trying to gain both size and strength in one workout. However this will not work because the movements that build the most strength do not build the most size. But if you focus purely on mass building movements growth stalls quickly because you arent getting stronger. I dont care how many forced reps and negatives yiu do they will only get yiu so far.
Also as a consequence of his low rep training dorians body looked great standing relaxed but when he flexed there wasnt much to look at. Coleman on the other hand was popping all.pver the place.
I think its easy to dismiss Ronnie Coleman as a moron because he is humble black.and from the south. His training was very advanced. His bodybuilding workouts he was always in the 12-15 rep range for pop his strength workouts down to 2 reps on deadlifts and squats i think he got 7 with 495 on benches.
Anyway this is the routine im trying right now. On 2nd chest day. Days marked light mean 12-15 rep range no less than 10 ever. Biceps triceps are always trained this way as are shoulders. Only back chest legs get heavy strength days.
Chest light biceps
Legs heavy
Back light shoulders triceps
Chest heavy biceps
Legs light
Back heavy
Rest day
Repeat day 1
So its a 6 day split where each bodypart except shoulders and triceps gets hit twice.
I am going to tweak it as i go. Last night for example i skipped triceps gonna hit them today after chest biceps.
I feel ok chest was sore yesterday but feels good today. Legs are sore but not super bad so tomorrow looks promising.
I think the only way to make this routine work is to get used to it. You just have to suffer. I doubt it was easy for Ronnie it wont be easy for me.
Running T blend and D 800/600 respectively with 250mg letro once or twice a week as needed. Really wanting to up the dose because i feel amazing but i dont think i need to just yet.
Sorry for thread hijack guys back to Arnold.
