I was doing a posing coaching session yesterday with a first time competitor preparing for a contest coming up in August. We went over all the basic relaxed poses and the mandatory poses in great detail. It’s amazing how much you can enhance your physique by holding the poses correctly.
One thing all you competitors should keep in mind as you work on your poses is to start each pose from the ground up. Many first time competitors are so focused on their upper bodies they forget about their legs and leave them relaxed and in poor positions. If you get in the habit of starting from the ground up you won’t forget and your poses will all be complete from head to toe!
I go over this along with lots of great posing and presentation tips in my DVD “Posing to Win”. I also offer 1/2 hour posing coaching sessions at my gym in Michigan for those interested in one on one assistance.
After you spend all those months dieting you should make sure you are presenting your physique to the best of your abilities when you hit the stage. Posing and overall presentation can be the difference between first and second place so don’t leave this important aspect of competition to chance.
Believe. Achieve.
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Hey Jeff, big fan of your blog, i had a question:
I have a shoulder injury at the moment that prevents me from doing certain excercises, for chest the only excercise i can do without any pain and with maximum weight are flat dumbbell presses with the palms rotated at each other at the bottom, and for triceps i cannot do any overhead movements so im stuck to doing pushdowns only, and for shoulders i can only do dumbbell presses and maybe rear lateral raises.
So my question is: can i still stimulate my chest,triceps,shoulders for maximum muscle growth by doing those exercises only? (still following the max-ot principles)
So for chest ill do 6-7sets of flat dumbbell presses, for triceps 4-5 sets of pushdowns and for shoulders 5sets of dumbbell presses + 2sets of rear lateral raises (or just 6-7sets of dumbbell presses)
Any disadvantages of doing it like that besides it being abit repetetive?
Sorry for the messy text, keep up the good work!
//Richard from Sweden
Hi Jeff, I know Stu bracketed his workouts with creatine, but could you please enlighten me on how best to take creatine if I am doing Max OT cardio in the mornings and Max OT weight training in the evenings? Should I still just bracket around the weight training sessions? Or should I bracket around both cardio and weight training sessions (that's a whopping 4 servings of creatine each day!)?
Kind Regards, Shanx.
Jeff you are a true inspiration source!!
I notice when you have been training for competitions you used to workout early in the mornings, right? Do you still do that?
Victor
Richard – You are fortunate to be able to execute some of the primary compound movements for each muscle group you mention and I think you can stimulate great gains using only those movements. You are smart to stick with those movements that cause the least aggrivation.
Shanx – I don't think it is necessary to bracket both cardio and weights. I think it makes sense to follow your cardio session with a serving of creatine if you are focused on maximum muscle building but don't think you would have to do one before.
Victor – Yes, I still prefer to workout early in the morning.
Jeff, I have a rotator cuff injury, it is an old injury, I am unable to do military press and incline bench without pain, do you have any suggestion for exercises that I could substitute those two.
Try dumbbell presses for shoulders. Sometimes the freedom of the motion of dumbbells helps.
If you can do flat movements for chest with no troubles then simply avoid incline movements and do all your chest sets on the flat.
Jeff a hypothetical questions,
It’s the day of the competition, would you rather be a great poser with a not so great physique OR a not so great poser with a great physique.
I have an additional question. In the DVD I Want to Look Like That Guy, there was a segment where you and Stu are running over his posing routine and you get upset with him. it wasn’t clear to me, was the reason, that you were upset at where he was physically or that his posing was not quite what you expected?
He was behind where I thought he should be with his condition.
Great Physique. You can be a great poser all day long and if that won’t jump you ahead of someone with a great physique. If physiques are close then posing can make the difference.