“The single-most important thing you can do if you want great shoulders is to learn how to do a perfect side lateral raise,” Toney boldly proclaims. “If you can learn how to isolate that medial head and not involve any other muscle groups, you are well on your way.” Freeman alternates between two methods of doing his side laterals. When he does them standing, he likes to run down the rack. After warming up with a couple light sets, he starts at the 60s and does 5 reps. Without rest, he repeats 5 reps going down in 5-pound increments (55, 50, 45, etc.) until he gets to the 5s and does as many reps as possi- ble until his arms can’t move. That’s 12 pair of dumbbells in a row and roughly 70-80 reps, and that’s just 1 set! Toney will also do seated dumbbell laterals, but with an 8-second pause at the top of each rep. For these, he only needs 25-30 pounds at most for 10-12 excruciating reps. If you haven’t had a pump in your side delts in awhile, either one of Toney’s methods is bound to do the trick.
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January 2009 www.musculardevelopment.com RH: Dave, Toney had a bit of a slump for a couple shows, and as typically happens, some people immediately wrote him off as being all done. His 15 minutes were up, or whatever. As his nutritionist, were you concerned that his best days might be behind him, or was it just a bump in the road?
DP: Actually, I wasn’t working with him at all in that time period.
RH: I must have missed that; it was probably on the boards. Was he on his own then?
DP: For the 2007 Mr. Olympia, Toney used a friend of his who had convinced him he could have him looking better than I could. It turned out badly. For the Iron Man and the Arnold this year, he went back to my diet, but he tried doing it on his own.
RH: That didn’t work, apparently.
DP: It’s just too hard to crack the whip on yourself. If I had him doing 3 hours of cardio, on his own, he might decide that he would be fine with 2 hours, just little things like that. We never had a falling out. There wasn’t bad
blood or anything like that between us, but it was Flex Wheeler who mediated and brought us together at the Arnold again. I helped him in the two weeks after that for the New Zealand show, where he grabbed an Olympia qualification with third place. Then we went full-blast for the three shows right before the Olympia. He won the Tampa Pro and the Europa show, and then there was that funny fourth place at the Atlantic City. That was a very con- troversial decision.
RH: What was controversial about it? Should he have beat Melvin and won?
DP: No, he didn’t deserve to beat Melvin, but he defi- nitely should have beaten Darrem and Johnnie Jackson. But it was the last chance for both of them to qualify for the Olympia, so there was speculation that this could have had something to do with the final outcome. This was what a lot of people were saying after the show, anyway.
RH: So your record with Toney is actually damn good.
DP: Four pro wins, third at the Arnold, another third in
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New Zealand, and that erratic placing in Atlantic City.
RH: Would you say that not working with you is what caused his condition to suffer there for a little while?
DP: That was part of it, but Toney was also out of his groove for a while. He was down in Florida living with [female bodybuilder; name
withheld] for a while and not in his
routine. All in all, he just didn’t have the right team behind him and that’s important.
RH: So is it safe to say you
two will continue working together?
DP: Yeah, I think we’re married for life now! (laughs) I keep him in line, and I also know his body very well now. And Toney is easy to work with in the sense that if I tell him to do some- thing, he doesn’t argue or try to rationalize his way out of it, he just does it.
RH: Would you say that this recent Mr. Olympia was the best Toney has ever looked? Is he capa- ble of looking even better?
DP: It is the best he’s ever looked or
at least equal to his previous best. He can look better than that. His glutes had nice, deep lines from the side, but they weren’t as clear when viewed from the back shots. One thing I learned over the last couple shows is that you can’t fill Toney out unless you deplete him to near death. If we don’t take him down to that point, the results when he carbs-up are less than spectacular. Toney doesn’t lose muscle when he does this, so that’s not a concern.
RH: Speaking of that, what does he carb up on? Potatoes, waxy maize, pie filling?
DP: No, he only carbs-up on white rice. And we keep it at 300 grams a day.
RH: That doesn’t sound like enough for a guy that steps onstage over 280 pounds.
DP: We know from past experience that if we go with a lot more, he just spills over. You have to understand that toward the very end we also take out fats so he’s only eating protein, so when he’s filling out he’s eating protein, fats and carbs all together for the first time during the diet. It’s like topping off a tank. You need to put just the right amount of the right fuel in.
RH: Can you give me an idea of what his diet was like for most of the prep?
DP: Sure. Each meal had about 50 grams of protein, which could be from omega-3 whole eggs, salmon, bison or swordfish. He would also have 25-30 grams of fats. Some of that would come from the protein source, or else he would get it from all-nat- ural peanut butter, macadamia nut butter, or almond butter. At four weeks out, we started to rotate these days with days where the fats would be replaced by fibrous carbs like a cup of green beans or asparagus. Because the calories from those were so much lower, Toney was running on fumes on those days, basically. For the last two weeks, he was eating all protein and fibrous carbs. Then on the last couple days, we put the fats back in along with the rice, and you saw the results.
RH: I did, and they were very impressive. You two obviously make a great team.
DP: We do. And the best is yet to come for the Arnold. He’s starting the diet at a much leaner bodyweight, so just wait and see what the X-Man has in store next time.
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MD Toney Freeman at the 2008 Mr. Olympiawww.fantamag.com
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