CONDICIONES ESPECIALES DEL CONTRATO

Legs and Calves – 90 sec rest between all sets and exercises Leg Extension

• 3 sets (15, 12, 10 reps) negatives Leg Press

• 4 sets (15, 12, 10, 15 reps) Sumo Squat with DB Between Legs • 3 sets (15, 12, 10 reps) Walking Lunges with DB

• 3 sets (20 reps each side) Seated Leg Curl

• 4 sets (15, 12, 10, 15 reps) negatives Seated Calf Raises

• 5 sets (15, 12, 10, 8, 8 reps) Standing Calf Raises

• 5 sets (25, 20, 18, 15, 12 reps)

Chest, Triceps, and Abs – 90 sec rest between all sets and exercises Incline Chest Press BB

• 4 sets (12, 10, 8, 12 reps) negatives 10-degree Incline Bench Chest Press DB • 3 sets (12, 10, 8 reps) Incline Chest DB Fly

• 3 sets (15, 12, 10 reps) Dips or Dip Machine

• 4 sets (15, 12, 10, 8 reps) Skull Crusher with DB

• 3 sets (12, 10, 8 reps) Abdominal Crunch Machine

• 4 sets (30, 25, 20, 15 reps) negatives Bicycle on Mat

Back, Biceps, and Calves- 90 sec rest between all sets and exercises Lat Pull-down Wide

• 4 sets (15, 12, 10, 8 reps) negatives Machine Row (single arm)

• 4 sets (12, 12, 12, 12 reps) squeeze shoulder blades back before rowing Pullups (assisted)

• 3 sets (12, 10, 8 reps) negatives Cable Row (V-bar)

• 3 sets (12, 10, 8 reps) negatives DB Pull-over

• 3 sets (15, 15, 15 reps) BB Curl

• 4 sets (12, 10, 8, 12 reps) negatives Hammer Curls (alternating)

• 3 sets (12, 12, 10 reps) Straight Leg Press Calf Raises

• 5 sets (30, 25, 20, 15, 10 reps) Standing Calf Machine

• 3 sets (12, 10, 8 reps)

Shoulders, Rear Deltoids, and Abs- 90 sec rest between all sets and exercises Standing BB Shoulder Press

• 5 sets (15, 12, 10, 8, 15 reps) negatives Seated DB Shoulder Press

Stability Ball Crunch with Weight • 3 sets (25, 25, 25 reps) Full Body Crunch

• 3 sets (50, 50, 50 reps) Abdominal Twist (feet off ground)

• 3 sets (30, 30, 30 reps each side)

This routine is only four days. Depending on what you need to work on to perfect your body, adding another day of the same body part already trained that you are lacking would be ideal. Example: if you need more development in your back, then lift back twice a week, yet space it out as far away from each other as possible (Wednesday/ Saturday). This routine is a basic 4-day split, depending on your body type and level of fitness, you may have to tweak the routine to fit you. Go to failure on ALL sets. The last 2-3 reps should be almost impossible to achieve, but still keep good to perfect form. Remember in Figure/Bikini it is all about the way you look, not how strong you are.

During off-season I still stick with at least 50 minutes of cardio six times a week, while consuming around 1600- 1800 calories.

I highly recommend staying lean during the off-season, so contest prep will be much easier and enjoyable. I prefer to eat clean 99.99% of the time.

If you would like further information/coaching for figure/bikini or basic health/weight loss, contact Kelly Booth- Hater at [email protected] or visit her website at www.kellysfitlifestyle.com

—By Adam Driggers

Adapting

If you train long enough, you’ll have to adapt to any number of situations. These include family, schedules, careers, injuries and we could go on and on. However, for the sake of this article I want to focus on adapting to injuries (pain), specifically chronic pain. This is the kind of pain that sets in and doesn’t go away. You might get a break from the pain from time-to-time when your injury is given enough rest, but when heavy training resumes, so does the pain. When this is the case, we have to learn to adapt our training to work around the pain and continue to make progress.

In my case, the constant pain is in my elbows. For years, I tried everything I could think of to get rid of the pain that was causing me to limp through every single bench session. Medications, stretching, massage, injections, and time off were all given a fair shake. Nothing worked long enough to get me back on track. My bench suffered and I have been without a PR bench for three years. I tried ignoring the problem because in the back of my mind I knew this would be the end of my competitive lifting. I just knew that my elbows would be the reason I would fall absent from the platform. Not giving up easily, I sat down and assessed the issue, which I never did before. I looked at everything, tracing out several possible solutions. The following was my conclusion and has put me back on the road to a PR.

The root of my problem was not the bench, but the extreme extension of the wrist under heavy squats. Every heavy squat session was taking a heavy toll on the muscles of my forearms causing extreme pain in my elbows on the following bench training session. My training is setup for squats on Saturday morning, with bench sessions on Monday afternoon. This was not enough time to allow my elbows to recover from damage done on Saturday before pounding them again with heavy benching. I was limping through every bench session and wondering why my numbers were going south. The fix was simply adapting my training schedule to allow more time between heavy sessions. This is what I do now:

Monday: Shirted bench Tuesday: Deadlift Thursday: Accessory

Saturday: Suited Squat (five days after a shirted bench)

Monday: Light to Moderate bench – no shirt (possibly dynamic work) Tuesday: Deadlift

Thursday: Accessory

Saturday: Light to Moderate Squat – no suit (possibly dynamic work) Monday: Shirted Bench (nine days after a heavy squat)

Remembering that I suffer the most under a heavy squat, not the bench, this schedule gives me five days to rest my arms between a heavy bench and a heavy squat, and nine days to rest my arms following a heavy squat. Remember to gauge what light means in regards to your injury. For my light-to-moderate means, I stay under 60 percent. Any more than that and I experience more stress than I am capable of recovering from.

—By Dr. Michael Hartman

Strength-Focused Olympic