Courtesy of Gaspari Nutrition, these training videos describe various modifications to standard exercises commonly used in Back Training. Slight modifications to these common exercises will help increase training intensity and muscle group isolation!

Video 1: Building A Better Back

*Dumbbell Rows, 3 Second Squeeze & Rear Double Biceps Flexing: Increase your mind-to-muscle connection while focusing on the rhomboid-trap tie in with a slight variation of the traditional dumbbell row.

Use a lighter weight dumbbell and position yourself on a flat or inclined bench as you normally would for dumbbell rowing. Begin with the weight lowered in front of you more so than you normally would position the dumbbell. Then bring it up as far as you can and hold/squeeze for three seconds before heading into the next rep. Perform your normal rep range of 10-15. After completing the lift, go straight into a contracting/squeezing-flexing motion leading into a rear double biceps pose that you will hold for a 5-10 second count. You can do these for reps as well.

Video 2: Building A Better Back

*Low Cable Rope Rows: An act merely as simple as replacing the traditional dual handle V attachment with the rope for your cable rowing exercise will provide you with a variation in technique that will feel far from the standard, targeting the trap, lower trap, and rhomboid muscles.

Focus on utilizing the full range of motion and longer contraction that is able to be achieved with the rope vs the standard dual handled attachment. Stay in a higher rep range of 15-20 and once again go into a lower back flex with a pre rear double biceps pose (as demonstrated in the video) and then move into the full rear double biceps and flex for 5-10 seconds.

Video 3: Building A Better Back

*Single Arm Machine Row: Its important to remember that even machine exercises, be it plate loaded or pulley system, can still be modified from its standard use to incorporate additional variations of the exercise. As seen in this video, the machine row can be modified by simply using one arm to perform the lift and the other to brace with.

When you think of a machine exercise, your first thought usually isn’t that it will help increase the development of the mind to muscle connection. One armed or unilateral training is great for increasing the intensity of the lift as well as developing a better mind to muscle connection. Don’t forget to incorporate additional training techniques such as multiple drop sets and extra slow contractions such as a 3 second pause for a few of the reps or individual sets.

*Low Cable Seated Rows: Attaching the traditional Lat Pulldown Bar to a low cable is great for alternate rowing technique. Remember to get a full squeeze with your back when pulling. Additional variations can incorporate a 3 second pause at each contraction.

*Rack Dead Lifts: By replacing traditional dead lifts with rack dead lifts, the normal sticking point around the knee section is eliminated, thus allowing you to train heavier and avoid the highest risk point of injury.

*Smith Machine Pull Ups: Smith Machine Pull Ups are a simple variation of the traditional pull up. To make it even more challenging, drape chains over your chest and this exercise gets a new twist. Chain exercises open up an often forgotten category of exercises that can put a real spin on traditional lifts.

Seemingly relegated to bodybuilding folk lore, most gyms today, sadly do not think to add chains to the equipment inventory. Sure a few dungeonus hard core gyms dedicated solely to the bodybuilder still have them in the arsenal, but the vast majority have seen the chains fade away into obscurity.

However, rubber bands, typically used for yoga exercises and stretching, are more commonly found in the modern gym. Many bodybuilders mistakenly do not give them a second look. Don’t be fooled by the rubber band’s bright cardio oriented colors though. Simply securing the handles (perhaps to the protruding weight rack on each side) in a position that places the band across your chest during Smith Machine Pull Ups, will add the extra resistance that increases intensity, totally revamping the exercise.

The FST-7 method of weight training is credited to Hany Rambod who is a professional personal trainer with an impressive client list, including the reigning Mr Olympia, Jay Cutler. Over the course of this past year, Jay Cutler trained with FST-7 and was able to bring about a total body reconstruction from his 2008 Mr Olympia presentation to probably his most impressive package ever, which was enough to regain the Olympia title (2008 Photos, 2009 Photos).

Read Hany Rambod’s article on FST-7 that was originally posted in the MuscularDevelopment.com forums.

FST-7— The Key To Muscle Growth

What Is FST-7?
FST-7 is a training system I devised after years of research and a great deal of trial and error with many clients. FST stands for Fascial Stretch Training and the seven refers to the 7 sets performed for the final exercise of a target body part. I have had many clients use this system for overall growth and especially to improve stubborn body parts that were seemingly resistant to just about anything else the person had tried. FST-7 encompasses several factors both inside and outside the gym. This month, we will focus on the training aspects.

Is Fascia Limiting Your Muscle Growth?
There are three types of fascia in the human body, but the type bodybuilders should be concerned about is deep fascia. This is dense, fibrous connective tissue that interpenetrates and surrounds the muscles, bones, nerves and blood vessels of the body. The high density of collagen fibers is what gives the deep fascia its strength and integrity. The amount of elastin fibers determines how much extensibility and resiliency it will have. In other words, some of us have fascia that is thicker and tougher than others. The most genetically blessed bodybuilders have thinner fascia, which is why their muscle bellies appear to be larger and fuller, with that round “bubbly” look that all bodybuilders covet. Ronnie Coleman and Phil Heath would be two prime examples of individuals blessed with thin fascia. Their muscles expand easier. Think of it in terms of it being easier to blow up a balloon as opposed to one of those water bottles that strongmen like Franco Columbu used. Jay Cutler and Nasser El Sonbaty are two men who clearly have thicker fascia. This didn’t prevent them from building substantial muscle mass, obviously, but neither man ever had that round “Marvel Comics” appearance to his muscles. Yet the average bodybuilder has thicker fascia than either of those two champions. In an effort to expand their fascia and allow growth to occur, some have turned to synthol and other items that are injected deep into the muscle belly. There have even been some advisors, mainly online, who make it seem as if this is the only solution and must be done. They will also try and insist that all the pros use synthol and site inject, which I can assure you is not true. Synthol and related products are foreign substances and you can never be certain how they will metabolize in the body. We are starting to see various health issues with bodybuilders which are more than likely related to site injecting. Yes, you do need to stretch the muscle fascia to experience optimal growth, but that is not the way to do it.

All Stretching Is Not The Same
I am not the first person to recognize the importance of stretching the muscle fascia. First John Parrillo, then more recently Dante Trudel of DC Training fame, incorporate aggressive stretching during workouts as part of their training programs. They had the right idea, but stretching the fascia by elongating the muscle is not the best method. FST-7 is based on stretching the muscle from the inside out by volumizing it. This is accomplished by getting the greatest pump possible while training.

Do I Still Train Heavy Or Can I Just Pump Up With Light Weights?
One thing I don’t want anyone misconstruing is that FST-7 is all about pumping. That’s just one component. I also believe that a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle, and you absolutely must train with heavier weights in the 8-12 rep range. I have tried many variations of heavier and lighter training with clients over the years and discovered that both types are needed. Heavy weights will build thickness and density, but they will not give you that round, full look. Similarly, getting incredible pumps all the time can impart some of that roundness, but you won’t ever get extreme muscle size without training with heavy straight sets. So you need to focus equally on maximizing both your strength and your pump in the same workouts to see optimal results. Here’s an example of a biceps workout— FST-7 style— that shows you how to incorporate both:

Alternate Dumbbell Curls 3-4 x 8-12
Machine Preacher Curls 3 x 8-12
EZ-Bar Curls 7 x 8-12 (rest 30-45 seconds between sets while sipping water— more on this next month)

I don’t typically like to use very high reps, because too often you will experience general fatigue and get short of breath before you have built the maximum pump in the muscle. I also don’t like the weight to be too heavy and limit the reps any lower than 8, because this is when you see form breaking down and ancillary muscles kicking in and robbing the target muscle of the proper stimulation. You can think of the “7” set as blowing up a balloon. We keep the rest periods fairly short, because as you pump up the muscle, a little blood escapes in that time. You can think of it as blowing up a balloon with a slight leak in it— even though the balloon is being inflated, some air is escaping. The key is to build on the pump sets by set, exponentially, so that it reaches its maximum state by the final set. If the rest periods were too short, you wouldn’t have enough energy to do justice to the 7 sets. Another question I often get is should the weight be constant as the 7 sets go on? It can be, but it’s perfectly fine to reduce the weight one or two times as needed to stay in the proper rep range. There may also be times when you need to increase the weight, but this happens less often.

How Often Can I Train Body Parts This Way?
Generally speaking, this type of training is too traumatic on the larger muscle groups to use more than once a week. Due to the sheer volume of muscle cells, soreness tends to linger too long to allow for more frequent workouts. For instance, Phil Heath recently completed a back workout and was sore for four days. Since he is supposed to be training back and chest twice a week in preparation for the Arnold Classic, this threw him off his schedule somewhat. The higher than normal amount of microscopic tears in the muscle caused by FST-7 training necessitates a bit more recovery time than standard training protocols. However, smaller body parts like arms and calves certainly can and should be trained twice a week. This gives you twice as many opportunities to stretch the fascia in what are often exceedingly stubborn body parts. Here’s a sample split that displays how you could arrange this:

Day 1: Biceps and triceps, calves
Day 2: Legs
Day 3: OFF
Day 4: Chest and triceps
Day 5: Back and calves
Day 6: Shoulders and biceps
Day 7: OFF

This is a split geared toward someone with the goal of improving stubborn arms. There are many other variations depending on what the individual’s goals might be.

Which Exercises Are Best Suited To The “7” Sets?
Certain exercises are more appropriate than others for the “7” sets. The big, compound free-weight movements like squats and deadlifts usually are poor choices, for two reasons. For one thing, they involve several other muscle groups and don’t do a good job of isolating a target muscle. Also, they require technique and balancing, which tends to break down if one attempts to perform multiple sets in such a short time span. Machines are a good choice in many instances because they keep you in a fixed plane of movement and thus make it easier to isolate a given muscle. Those with selectorized stacks also make it very fast and convenient to increase or decrease the resistance as needed. Here are some suggested movements that I have found work very well:

Back Width: Machine pullovers (Hammer Strength, Nautilus) or cable pullovers

Back Thickness: Seated row machines with chest support

Chest: Pec deck or peck flye machine*, cable crossovers
*I find that the pec decks with the pads for the elbows usually work very well for shorter trainers, while the pec flye machines with handles seem to be better for tall guys. Try both; you will know by the pump and range of motion you achieve which one is a better choice for you.

Shoulders: Machine lateral raises with pads— my favorite is made by Bodymasters. Hammer Strength, LifeFitness and Cybex also produce similar models.

Quads: Leg extensions, leg presses

Hamstrings: Seated or lying leg curls

Biceps: EZ-bar curls, machine curls, cable “front double biceps curls”

Triceps: Cable pushdowns using rope attachment
Overhead cable extensions
Skull-crushers (for advanced trainers)

Calves: Standing and seated raises, calf raises using leg press
(alternate between these three)

When Should I Do My “7”…
The best time to do your “7” is as the final exercise for a muscle group. You don’t want to do it first, as this would take away from your performance on the heavy straight sets that are also a critical factor in building muscle mass. Finishing off a body part with a great pump is something many top bodybuilders have been doing instinctively for years, not knowing that they were expanding their fascia and maximizing growth. It may be tempting to do your pumping sets earlier on if you can’t seem to get any kind of pump going, but I would urge you instead to do something like a set or 2 of 21s to get the blood flowing and then proceed with your heavy sets before capping it all off with your “7” set for that body part. Remember, “7s” are done at the conclusion of each body part, so if you are working multiple body parts in a given workout, you will be doing two or more of these extended pumping sets.

Sample FST-7 Body Part Routines*

Triceps

Close-Grip Bench Presses 3-4 x 8-12
Weighted or Machine Dips 3 x 8-12
Overhead Cable Extensions 7 x 8-12
(Beginner and Intermediate)
Skull-Crushers 7 x 8-12
(Advanced)

Quads

Leg Extensions 3-4 x 8-15
Squats 4 x 8-12
Hack Squats or Leg Presses 3 x 8-15
Leg Extensions or Leg Presses 7 x 8-15

Chest

Incline Dumbbell Presses 3-4 x 8-12
Incline Dumbbell Flyes 3 x 8-12
Flat Hammer or Dumbbell Presses 3 x 8-12
Pec Deck or Cable Crossovers 7 x 8-12

Shoulders

Seated Dumbbell Presses 4 x 8-12
Barbell or Dumbbell Front Raises 3 x 8-12
Dumbbell Lateral Raises 3 x 8-12
Lateral Raise Machine 7 x 8-12

Here is a little note worthy Q and A about FST-7

FST-7: Preloaded and Reloaded!

Question: One of your clients goes to my gym and I saw him training legs the other day. I always pay attention to whatever he’s doing to see what I can pick up and use for myself. I’ve seen him using the FST-7 system for a while now and normally he does the “7” sets at the end of a body part. This time, he did his 7s on leg extensions at the very beginning of the workout. I think I recall you mentioning this variation on the FST-7 system before, but I don’t understand the rationale for doing 7s in the beginning. What gives?

HR: What you saw was one of two variations my clients have been using as specialization routines for stubborn body parts. I call these the “FST-7 Preloaded” and “FST-7 Reloaded” concepts. What you witnessed was the FST-7 Preloaded version, which has a bit of the pre-exhaust element to it. In the case of the workout you watched, the athlete would begin with 7 sets of leg extensions for roughly 10-12 reps each, with only 30-45 seconds rest in between each set.

Question: What this does is “prime the pump” for the heavier sets to follow. The next two exercises are front squats and leg presses, each done in a high-intensity style. After sufficient warm-ups, 2 work sets of 8-12 reps, as heavy as possible, are performed. Normally, the quads would not receive any significant pump from sets such as these. Many bodybuilders would feel the more powerful glutes and hip flexor muscles working instead. But the initial 7 sets on leg extensions served to pump up the quadriceps and pre-stretch the fascia, so that the heavy sets of front squats and leg presses would deliver a far more significant pump than usual. Then, to really make sure that the quads are hammered into new growth, we finish with a final set of 7s on hack squats. This technique is fairly new, but so far the results are very encouraging. Another advanced version is the FST-7 Reloaded concept.
HR: In this variation, two heavy exercises are performed for straight sets, and the workout ends with two series of 7s done back-to-back. In the example of quads, an athlete may start with two or three exercises such as leg extensions, squats, and perhaps walking lunges; then finish with leg presses and hack squats for their 7s. Both of the methods discussed above would be ideal for a person who needs to improve the fullness and sweep of his or her quadriceps, yet is unable to squat heavy due to preexisting problems with the lower back or knees. Another common muscle group the Reloaded version is used on is the upper chest. I might have a client do heavy sets with incline dumbbell presses, incline dumbbell flyes, and the flat Hammer Strength bench press machine and finish with both the pec deck and cable flyes done for 7 sets each. Again, I must emphasize that these are advanced techniques and both make a deep impact on the body’s ability to recover. You must not attempt to use them for every single body part at the same time or I guarantee you that you’ll overtrain. I also want to add that even when used sparingly as I suggest, special attention must be paid to optimizing recovery with proper rest, nutrition, and supplementation. If you fail to respect your body’s recovery needs, this or any other type of training system will not deliver the results you want.

Here are some note worthy excerpts from the series:

The PUMP is just extra blood flow to the muscle. Just because you pump it, it doesn’t mean you are going to create any growth. I can increase blood flow to the area with a 20-pound dumbbell but it’s not going to make me grow

I always trained like that (High Intensity with its emphasis on few sets and maximal effort) so there wasn’t a huge difference. I just cut back a little bit from ’92 onwards. Generally, before that I was doing two sets to failure. A lot of people get confused because it has been put out in the magazines that Dorian does one-set training. I never did one set per exercise: what I did was one set to failure.

I did the warm up sets before that and how many I did would depend on the exercise and where it was in the routine. The idea was to warm up and prepare that muscle for the maximum set because that was the one that counted, where you are overloading it and you are putting stress on your body that it is not used to and it is going to react by growing slightly bigger and stronger: that’s the idea. Prior to ’92 I was doing two sets to failure, so I would do maybe a couple of warm-up sets and then one set to failure, then probably drop down the weight probably five to ten percent for the next set to failure. Obviously, if I’ve been to failure with 100 pounds and I have six to eight reps, then if I did 100 pounds on the next set I wouldn’t get those six to eight reps because of the fatigue, so I would have had to drop down.

But actually you can do more training and more volume as a beginner because you are not generating that much intensity. Let’s say that you are just starting bodybuilding and you do three sets of squats to failure with 100-pounds. That’s going to place a certain degree of stress on your body.

Moving forward, you have been training for six years and you are doing 400-pound squats. That is four times the weight and a lot more stress on the body, but your nervous and immune systems, your recovery systems, haven’t changed from day one. So as you get bigger and stronger and more advanced you are able to generate a lot more intensity and stress, but the ability of your body to recover from it – unless you bring anabolic steroids into the equation – hasn’t changed.

So one set of squats with 400-pounds is probably more stressful then three with 100-pounds. Therefore as you get more advanced you should be doing less volume, provided the intensity is high.

I would always pre-exhaust before I got onto the compound exercises, but I did leg press, and hack squatting, or squatting on a Smith machine instead of going to squats. And I found I got much better development from these exercises than from just heavy squatting. It depends a lot on your structure, but it (the squat) didn’t suit me. So hack squats, leg presses and pre-exhaustion with leg extensions.
For calves I did standing calves raises and seated calve raises, very heavy with full range of motion, controlled.

[ Q ] Clearly nutrition and training are the most important bodybuilding aspects one needs to consider. If a young bodybuilding aspirant asked you whether he should add steroids to this mix, what would you say?

I would say no because at the beginning you are going to grow anyway, as you have a lot of potential there. The body is not used to exercise. You need to learn what effects your diet has on your body and how to train properly. You won’t learn these things as well if you are taking something that will do the job for you.

And if you are overtraining it will mask this. So you are going to get some results anyway and you need to learn how to train and eat properly and get the most from these things. And you will grow anyway over the first couple of years.

Actually, it also seems that steroids work better on someone who has been training over a longer period, maybe because they are able to generate more intensity.

It gets to a point where it’s hard to recover, so for a beginner I definitely wouldn’t recommend them. I don’t recommend them to anyone but for someone who is just starting it would be especially detrimental. It wouldn’t be doing them any favors.

The Gaspari Training Series

LEGS

ARMS

SHOULDERS

BACK

CHEST

LEGS

ARMS

SHOULDERS

BACK

CHEST

Shoulder???

Victor Prisk MD, wrote an article published in the September 2008 issue of Muscular Development Magazine that almost all bodybuilders and bench press enthusiasts will find beneficial. Hopefully this will help you in your training.

Click image to enlarge for reading:

Arnold said that heavy bench pressing is one of the best exercises for developing a thick massive chest.

We all naturally assume this to be true anyways, but Arnold also said that this exercise is most important and will have the most positive impact when used in the first two years of a bodybuidler’s training. This is when an aspiring bodybuilder should be training like a powerlifter using heavy weight and low reps in order to establish mass on his frame. If a bodybuilder never really trains with heavy weight & performs heavy core lifts, then the individual will never develop a truly powerful looking build, but more of a magazine clothing model look. After the first two or so years of heavy training, then training methods should change to more of a bodybuilder’s style. Shifting from barbell to dumbell training is highly recommended at this point to avoid shoulder injury & before you get caught up in the endless bench press (powerlifting) race with other people in the gym.

If you have questions or have no idea what I am talking about, then let me refer you to Arnold’s BodyBuilding Encyclopedia as well as a previous posted article written by the crew at AniamlPak.com that is titled, BodyBuilder’s Home Economics 101. This is how a beginner should approach his training.

(Click on the picture and it will enlarge into another window)