PumptheIron – Body Building Blog

The 2010 Mr Olympia contest which will yet again establish the top bodybuilder in the world for the next year, will be webcast by BodyBuilding.com September 24-25, 2010. While the webcast covers the entire Olympia weekend, the mens Mr Olympia contest is by far the main event. Click here for a direct link to the webcast.

On Friday 09/24/2010 beginning at 9:00 Eastern Time, the Fitness Olympia Finals, Bikini Olympia Finals, Ms. Olympia Finals followed by the Mr. Olympia Pre-Judging will be webcast by BodyBuilding.com

The mens Mr Olympia Finals will conclude Saturday 09/25/2010 at 9:00 Eastern Time. Other events will be webcast prior to the main events- Click here for a full listing of the Olympia Weekend schedule and events- just remember the listings on the linked page are in Pacific Time, as the Olympia Weekend takes place in Las Vegas.

The 2009 Mr Olympia was one of the best competitions in recent years as history was made with the former Mr Olympia winner Jay Cutler, presenting his best ever Olympia physique and regaining his title after having been dethroned by Dexter Jackson, finishing in 2nd place in 2008. When Jay reclaimed the Mr Olympia title in 2009, he accomplished a feat that has never been done by any prior Mr Olympia. Not even the great Ronnie Coleman, arguably one of the best Mr Olympias ever, could succeed at ascending back to the Mr Olympia throne after losing the title to Jay Cutler in 2006. Jay Cutler is the first ever Mr Olympia winner to have lost and then reclaim a Mr Olympia title.

The 2010 Mr Olympia competition promises to be no less exciting than 2009 as Jay Cutler attempts to win a fourth Sandow and reign as Mr Olympia for another year. The 2010 Olympia line up is one of the strongest in recent years, which means that even the slightest slip up in conditioning can be the difference between a top five finish or not even placing. The 2010 Mr Olympia competitors are listed below along with a number signifying if the competitor placed in the top ten and in what position in the 2009 Mr Olympia.

2010 Mr Olympia Competitors

Ben White

Bill Wilmore

Branch Warren (2^nd 2009)

Craig Richardson

Dennis James

Dennis Wolf

Dexter Jackson (3^rd 2009)

Edward Nunn

Erik Fankhouser

Essa Ibrahim Hassan Obaid

Evgeny Mishin

Francisco Bautista

Hidetada Yamagishi (9^th 2009)

Jay Cutler (1^st Place/Mr Olympia Winner 2009)

Johnnie Jackson

Kai Greene (4^th 2009)

Marcus Haley

Mark Alvisi

Melvin Anthony

Phil Heath (5^th 2009)

Robert Piotrkowicz

Roelly Winklaar

Ronny Rockel (7^th 2009)

Toney Freeman (8^th 2009)

Troy Alves

Victor Martinez (6^th 2009)

The 2009 MR OLYMPIA, scheduled to be held at the Orleans Casino in Las Vegas 09/24-27/2009, will be webcast live by BodyBuilding.com

For the complete Olympia Weekend event schedule click here.

Of course the main event of the Olympia Weekend is the MR OLYMPIA contest, which will be held over the course of two nights. To be directed to the webcast page click here.

• MR OLYMPIA pre-judging begins Friday night at 10:00 pm Central Time.
• Final judging for the MR OLYMPIA will start Saturday night at 10:00 pm Central Time.

Check out additional Olympia information at the Competition Homepage.

BodyBuilding.com is posting an article series titled, 5 Days of Dorian which will provide readers with depth interviews and training Q&A straight from The Shadow himself, 6 time MR OLYMPIA – Dorian Yates.

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.

In a surprising finish, reigning MR OLYMPIA- Jay Cutler was dethroned and placed 2nd behind new MR OLYMPIA- Dexter Jackson.

First of all, here are the results of the 2008 Mr Olympia

Click on an image for Muscular Development’s contest photos

1. Dexter Jackson

2. Jay Cutler

3. Phil Heath

4. Dennis Wolf

5. Toney Freeman

6. Melvin Anthony

7. Silvio Samuel

8. Dennis James

9. Moe Elmoussawi

10. Gustavo Badell

Jay Cutler was vulnerable after last year’s displeasing 2007 showing (and victory), but here are a few points about this year’s results that I will go ahead and make that I found to be shocking:

• Probably the most shocking thing to me was Dennis Wolf’s 4th place placing. Leading up to the competition, Wolf was tagged to be Jay Cutler’s biggest threat. With Dexter Jackson’s victory, perhaps the Olympia has taken a turn away from the freak show builds of the Ronnie’s and Jay’s to return to the more proportioned but smaller physiques of champions such as Dexter Jackson, Frank Zane, and Franco Columbu. Being one of the larger bodybuilders, how will Dexter Jackson’s win affect Dennis Wolf’s chances of ascending to the throne of the Olympia in the future? What kind of package will Jay need to bring to the 2009 Olympia to reclaim his throne as best bodybuilder in the world?

• Point two, Jay came into the competition in better condition than he showed up in for his 2007 victory. It is reported that he even dropped 12 lbs over night between pre judging and the finals. Coming in noticeably better than he did last year, I really thought that this would be enough for Jay to be able to retain the title. Jay said that he came in ‘off’ on Friday night’s Prejudging and felt that he was battling from behind by Saturday’s Finals competition, and that being the reason why he dropped 12 lbs in between nights.

• Point three, I was very shocked to see a smaller bodybuilder win “The Big Man’s Show”. As great as Dexter looked, the trend for the more than two decades has been for  Mr Olympia to be freakishly massive – to the point where guys can barely imagine being that “swoll” and their girl friends are saying how sick and deformed MR OLYMPIA looks! Perhaps we are seeing a redefining of the physique of what the top bodybuilder in the world is going to be expected to look like.

• Shocker number four, Phil Heath placing over Dennis Wolf. I’m not saying this is a wrong placement at all-  Phil Heath could have won the Olympia and I would not argue about it, he was on the money. What was surprising was Dennis Wolf was expected to place 2nd or to dethrone Jay, but he actually placed at 4th, under Phil Heath, Dennis Wolf’s main competition for Olympia’s to come . Phil said it himself, he would be very ecstatic if he placed 3rd, and he did; look for Wolf and Heath to battle neck and neck for the Olympia title in the future. Right now, chalk up the score as: Phil Heath-1, Dennis Wolf-0.

• One other shocker was the placing of Silvio Samuel all the way down to 7th. Silvio was probably the most shredded competitor in the line up. Silvio was very impressive with his full rounded, diced up physique. 7th place was an absolute shocker to fans and Silvio himself. The only reasoning I can see for such a low showing is just his lack of size/mass in a show competing with other bodybuilders that are much larger than he is. Perhaps Melvin Anthony and Toney Freeman’s size just out weighed Silvio’s superb conditioning. The Olympia being a big man’s show, I think Silvio dropped in his placing because unlike Dexter Jackson, who was able to add some weight prior to competition, Silvio was still just a superbly conditioned “smaller” competitor who is dwarfed when standing next to the mass monsters of Jay Cutler and Dennis Wolf. I think Dexter was able to add enough weight to be elevated into a class able to stand next to Jay and Dennis without being dwarfed.

Since 1984, the reigning MR OLYMPIA’S physique has been an ominous and overpowering muscle mass as opposed to being thought of as perfectly proportioned. For the past two decades, MR OLYMPIAS – Lee Haney, Dorian Yates, Ronnie Coleman and Jay Cutler set a standard of a 250 lbs plus champion. Prior to Lee Haney ascending to the Olympia throne in 1984, 7 out of 8 consecutive years ranging from 1976-1983 had seen a trend for well proportioned champions with “smaller” physiques, usually around 200 lbs and definitely under 250 lbs, winning the Olympia competition and being named as the best bodybuilder in the world.

• 1976 Franco Columbu
• 1977 Frank Zane
• 1978 Frank Zane
• 1979 Frank Zane
• 1980- Arnold (read contest article here) breaks the trend of “smaller champions” and makes a surprising entry into the Olympia competition and wins his 7th Sandow becoming the 1980 MR OLYMPIA. In his 1980 win, he does not appear to be as massive as in his previous victories, although Arnold’s height alone, separates him from other bodybuilders.

• 1981 Franco Columbu
• 1982 Chris Dickerson
• 1983 Samir Bannout

So the question is, will Dexter’s win set the same kind of trend as the Franco/Zane era did?

In pondering this notion, we all have to take into account that Jay Cutler stated that he is not finished or retired.  In this interview on BodyBuilding.com, Jay Cutler states that he feels like he is still the leader and ambassador of bodybuilding,  and that he will be coming back as an aesthetic mass monster next year to win the Sandow back. Jay says he has always had a goal of winning at least 3 Sandows and that this year’s loss is only a setback.

Check out Jay Cutler’s interview with BodyBuilding.com on his plans for regaining the Olympia crown. Listen to Dexter Jackson’s thoughts and plans for defending his MR OLYMPIA title as well:

(Click Image to Listen)

BodyBuilding.com has made the webcasts of the entire Olympia Weekend available for viewing.

For the Olympia Webcast Main Page click here and for additional interviews pre and post show, click here.

MR OLYMPIA PREJUDGING

TOP TEN POSEDOWN

MR OLYMPIA FINALS

MR OLYMPIA POST SHOW

Muscular Development and BodyBuilding.com both have features that allow you to compare pictures of competitors performing the same pose or posing on stage side by side. The MD photo comparisons offer a greater diversity of pictures, just click the View Comparisons link under Mens BodyBuilding.

Compare Competitor-to-Competitor Contest Photos here:

Be sure to check out the 2008 Bikini Model Search pictures too!!