6 Whole Foods to Increase Muscle Gains

A Healthy Bodybuilder Will Be A Better Bodybuilder

We know you’re driven, an animal in the gym and all this nonsense about health and what foods to eat to improve health is for soccer Moms and those who don’t know our Jay Cutler from “Da Bears” Jay Cutler. But listen up people, to make optimum gains you need to maintain optimal all round health and keep your immune system cranking out at 100% efficiency. By doing so your gym efforts will reap more, and faster, muscle gains. Here’s six whole foods to help put you on that super healthy track.
 1) Nuts Linked to Longer Life Span
 Eating nuts every day reduces the death rate by 20 percent compared to not eating nuts, according to a Harvard University study of more than 100,000 health professionals. Higher nut consumption was also linked to a reduced death rate due to cancer, heart disease and lung disease. Nuts are highly nutritious foods that are high in unsaturated fats, fiber, vitamins and minerals, and antioxidants. Major health agencies, such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, recommend that people eat nuts as part of a healthy diet. (New England Journal Of Medicine, 369: 2001-2011, 2013)
 2) Long-Term Rice Intake Improves Blood Sugar Regulation
 America is in the midst of an obesity and diabetes epidemic, mainly caused by physical inactivity and poor diet. We need simple solutions to turn the tide. Korean researchers, in a study on mice, showed that rice consumption (50 percent of caloric intake) resulted in reduced bodyweight, blood sugar, insulin and leptin compared to animals consuming a high-fat diet. Rice improved blood sugar regulation by activating a high-energy metabolic pathway (AMPK) and a cellular sugar transporter (GLUT4). It is not known whether these results apply to humans. (Nutrition, published online January 10, 2014)
 3) Cherry Juice Reduces Inflammation and Muscle Damage
 Cherry juice is the real deal for protecting muscle tissue from damage during intense exercise ranging from marathons to monster weight-training workouts— according to a review of literature by Stella Lucia Volpe from Drexel University in Philadelphia. Chemicals in cherry juice, such as flavonoids and anthocyanins, prevent muscle oxidative damage and inflammation associated with exercise recovery. Cherry juice, which reduces exercise-induced muscle damage, inflammation and oxidative stress, might be useful for reducing sports injuries and promoting recovery. (ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal 18(1): 32-33, 2014)
 4) Eating Fish Linked to Slower Brain Aging
 People who ate baked or broiled fish once a week showed less loss of brain grey matter during a 10-year period than non-fish eaters— according to a study from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The benefits of eating fish did not apply to fried fish, and omega-3 fatty intake did not affect the results. Fish eaters were more likely to have a university education. It is likely that lifestyle was more important that fish for promoting healthy brains. Because two factors are related doesn’t mean that one caused the other. Don’t concentrate on individual foods. Rather, follow a healthy lifestyle that emphasizes a well-balance diet, exercise, minimal stress and positive associations with family and friends. (American Journal Preventive Medicine, published online July 29, 2014)
 5) Apples Decrease Inflammation
 Inflammation is a disturbance in the metabolism of critical structures in cells such as cell membranes. It is linked to serious health problems such as heart disease, dementia, stroke and arthritis. Antioxidants called polyphenols help fight inflammation by neutralizing highly reactive chemicals called free radicals that are produced naturally during metabolism. These chemicals trigger cell damage to membranes, DNA and mitochondria that impair the immune system and eventually lead to premature death. A study from New Zealand show that apples contained antioxidants called polyphenols that decreased inflammation and promoted more healthy microbes in the gut. It may be true that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. (Journal of Nutrition, 144:146-154, 2014)
 6) Raisins Improve Blood Sugar Control
Eating raisins three times a week will reduce blood pressure, blood sugar and levels of glycated hemoglobin, a marker of long-term blood sugar regulation— according to a study led by James Anderson from the University of Kentucky. Test subjects consumed either raisins or other snacks three times per week for 12 weeks. While there were no differences in bodyweight between groups, raisin consumption improved blood sugar regulation and blood pressure by more than 10 percent. Eating raisins might lower your risk of heart disease and improve metabolic health. (Postgraduate Medicine, 126: 37- 43, 2014)

NPC USA Overall Champs

How They Did As Pros...& Other Stuff

First ever USA overall champ in 1982 was middleweight Dale Ruplinger.

Over the weekend of July 25-26, Las Vegas will be invaded by a swarm of individuals committed to getting totally ripped by a means other than chugging liquor at a casino bar. This due to the 2014 NPC USA Championships being staged over that weekend at the Artemus W. Ham Concert Hall on the UNLC Campus.  This will be the 33^rd rendition of the Championships and just for the “let’s poke it in the eye and see if it blinks” hell of, in this column we pick out a few factoids from the contest’s illustrious history and provide a review of the 31 winners of the men’s overall title and how they fared as pros.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT!
 A review of the ensuing pro careers of the 32 USA overall champions.
  Year     Champion         Division        Best Pro                                                    Best Olympia
1982   Dale Ruplinger        M/W              8th: 1983 UK G.Prix                                     12th: 1983
1983   Ernie Santiago         M/W              Never competed as a pro.
1984   Phil Williams           (L/H)             1^st: 1988 Chicago Pro                                    Never competed
1985   Dave Hawk             (L/HW)          4^th: 1986 LA Pro & World Pro                      Never competed
1986   J.J. Marsh               (L/HW)          1^st: 1991 Ironman                                          12^th: 1993
1987   Mike Quinn             (H/W)            4^th: 1988 German, French & Greek G.Prix      6^th: 1988
1988   John DeFendis        (H/W)            12^th: 1989 Niagara Pro                                   Never competed
1989   Eddie Robinson      (L/HW)          1^st: 1990 Niagara Pro                                     10^th: 1990
1990   Aaron Baker           (H/W)             2^nd: 1995 Ironman & Florida Pro                   9^th: 1995
1991   Mike Matarazzo      (H/W)             2^nd: 1993 Pitt Pro & 1997 Canada Pro           9^th: 1998
1992   Flex Wheeler          (H/W)             1^st: in 17 pro contests                                   2^nd: 1993, ’98, ’99.
1993   Chris Cormier         (H/W)            1^st: in 11 pro contests                                   3^rd: 1999, ‘02
1994   Dennis Newman      (H/W)            7^th: 1998 Ironman                                         Never competed
1995   Phil Hernon             (H/W)            8^th: 1996 San Jose Pro                                  Never competed
1996   Craig Titus              (H/W)             2^nd: 2001 San Fran Pro                                11^th: 2002
1997   Ken Brown             (H/W)             15^th: 1999 Toronto Pro                                Never competed
1998   Dennis James          (S/HW)           1^st: in 3 pro contests                                    4^th: 2003
1999   Melvin Anthony      (S/HW)            1^st: in 3 pro contests                                    5^th: 2006
2000   Bob Cicherillo        (S/HW)            1^st: 2006 Masters World                              18^th: 2002
2001   Quincy Taylor        (S/HW)            2^nd: 2006 Europa & 2007 Montreal Pro        16^th: 2005, ‘07
2002   Idrise Ward-El        (S/HW)            9^th: 2004 Ironman                                        Never competed
2003   Richard Jones        (L/HW)            3^rd: 2004 Night of Champs                           18^th: 2004
2004   Mark Dugdale        (L/HW)            2^nd: in 4 pro contests                                    16^th: 2007
2005   Phil Heath              (HW)               1^st: in 9 pro contests                                    1^st: 2011, ’12, ‘13
2006   Omar Deckard       (S/HW)            3^rd: 2012 Aussie G. Prix                               Never competed
2007   Ben White              (S/HW)           1^st: 2010 Tampa Pro                                     16^th: 2011
2008   Brandon Curry       (H/W)             1^st: 2013 Arnold, Brazil                                  8^th: 2011
2009   Mark Alvisi            (H/W)             2^nd: 2010) Europa                                         Never competed
2010   Jason Huh              (/HW)             7^th: 2011 & ’12 Tampa Pro                           Never competed
2011   Steve Kuclo            (S/HW)          1st: 2013 Europa & 2014 Arnold Brazil           14^th: 2013
2012   Darron Glenn          (L/HW)          8^th: 2013 NY Pro (212s)                                Never competed
2013   Max Charles           (S/HW)          5^th: 2014 NY Pro                                           Never competed

Mike Quinn took top honors in 1987.

THE BODIES IN QUESTION  In 1982 the Championships had just under 100 competitors.
 In 2014 nearly 1,000 competitors will contest the Championships.
 In 1982 there was only two classes: men and women’s bodybuilding.
 In 2014 there are six divisions: men and women’s bodybuilding, men and women’s physique, figure and bikini.

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS ….
 In 1982 the event was held in Las Vegas.
 In 2014 Jon “I never saw a ticket I couldn’t sell” Lindsay will be promoting his 19th straight USA Championships. His first was in Long Beach in 1996, and it has been held in Vegas every year since, apart from 1999 when it took place in Santa Monica.

Winning the 1992 USA was Flex Wheeler’s gateway to 17 pro victories.

 In 1982 no IFBB pro cards were given out. In those days you had to win a World Amateur Championship to earn recruitment to the pros. First overall champ Dale Ruplinger duly accomplished that in late 1982. It wasn’t until the 1987 USAs that an overall win (and only an overall win) carried the reward of a pro card. In this year’s Men’s Bodybuilding Championships each of the seven class winners will get to turn pro.
 In 2013 across all classes 53 cards will be distributed. With so many cards being dealt its is rumored Jon Lindsay is hiring a local croupier to issue them.

GAME FOR BIG BOYS
 Of the 32 overall champs 20 came from the heaviest division. (From 1982 through 1997 the top division was heavyweight with the super heavyweight class being introduced in 1998.) Since the introduction of the super heavyweights, ten super heavies have won the overall, while three heavyweights and three light heavies have also won the overall. Of the 32 overall champs, seven titles have been won by light heavyweights and two by middleweights (1982 & ’83).

PHIL ALONE
 Only one Mr. Olympia, the present incumbent Phil Heath, has gained pro status through the USA Championships. If that is surprising the fact is that only one Mr. Olympia won a pro card via the NPC Nationals. That was Jay Cutler by virtue of winning the 1996 heavyweight division: He lost the overall to light heavy champ Willie Stallings. Eight-time Olympia champ Lee Haney, although winner of the first ever NPC Nationals in 1982, didn’t receive a pro card for his efforts. At that time the route to the pros was achieved by winning an IFBB Amateur World title which Haney duly did a couple of months after

A 210 pound Phil Heath dominated the 2005 event. Forty pounds later, he’s going for a fourth Sandow in September.

his Nationals triumph. Likewise Ronnie Coleman, possessor of eight Sandows, joined the pro ranks by winning the 1991 Amateur World’s shortly after finishing fourth at that year’s Nationals. In regard to the other two Mr. Olympias of the past thirty years, Dorian Yates and Dexter Jackson, the former became pro by winning the 1988 British Championships and the latter by annexing the 1998 North American overall title.
ROLL OF HONOR
 Here’s a list of overall winners who have gone on to record pro victories.
 Flex Wheeler (1992): 17 pro wins
 Chris Cormier (1993): 11 pro wins
 Phil Heath (2005): 9 pro wins
 Melvin Anthony (1999): 3 pro wins
 Dennis James (1998): 3 pro wins
 Steve Kuclo (2011): 2 pro wins
 J.J. Marsh (1986): 2 pro wins
 Bob Cicherillo (2000): 1 pro win
 Eddie Robinson (1989): 1 pro win

Steve Kuclo, winner of this year’s Arnold Brazil, was USA overall champ in 2011.

Building Boulder Shoulders

Ronny Rockel's Magnificent Seven

Those Boulder Shoulders
 At first glance, Ronny Rockel’s physique flows with such harmony that you may not think he has any standout body parts. But after a bit of perusal, you realize he does have a few muscle groups that are truly spectacular. His pecs are thick, full and striated. His quads are meaty, deeply detailed and feature exceptional sweep. And it would be tough to argue against Ronny’s shoulders being his best body part. They would have to be, otherwise how could he stand next to men like Ronnie, Jay, Wolf, Victor, Evan and Roelly— all of whom have magnificent delts— and have any chance of holding his own when he lacks their stature and sheer bulk?
      Yes, Ronnie’s shoulders are a big reason he is able to do so well because wide, round delts help create the illusion of greater mass. When you get right down to it, bodybuilding is a sport of illusion. Assuming you don’t have a weak chest or arms, building up the shoulders to their maximum possible dimensions and then carving clear splits and striations into them through years of hard, intelligent training is a winning strategy for any man who wants to be a champion bodybuilder. If you can manage to craft a pair of wide boulder shoulders like The Rock has, you will definitely take out plenty of rivals whether or not you can match them on height and weight. Nothing about Ronny’s physique has been created haphazardly or by accident. The following details the seven exercises that this master physique technician employs to build those cannonballs that sit atop his clavicles.

 

1) Overhead Presses     
 Being that these photos were taken the day after a contest, Ronny chose to do his presses on a machine. Those of you who have taken your physiques down into the lowest possibly levels of body fat and water retention need no further explanation, but suffice it to say that nobody in totally shredded condition is in any mood to be pushing up mega-heavy loads of free iron.
    Normally, Rockel chooses two of the most difficult pressing movements a man can do: the standing barbell press and the seated dumbbell press. Both require balance and coordination, along with brute power. That being said, he has avoided injury over the years both by utilizing thorough warm-ups and a slow and controlled rep cadence. A warm-up of 30 reps is done first, followed by 2 sets of 15-20 reps. “I avoid extremely heavy weight, extremely low reps and explosive movements for deltoids,” he explains. “They are isolated muscles with many heads and attachments, so they demand extreme discipline and concentration.”
      You won’t catch Ronny doing ballistic or cheating reps. For his final set of presses, being sufficiently warmed up, he challenges himself with a drop set of 6, 6 and 6 more reps for a total of 18. Each rep is done slowly even until the very last, ensuring constant tension on his shoulders.

 

2) Dumbbell Lateral Raises
 If you’ve spent your fair share of time in gyms, you probably know that the two exercises commonly done with lousy form are curls and lateral raises. It’s typical to see guys heaving and throwing up way more weight than they have any business handling, and in the process stimulating the target muscle about as effectively as an ugly hooker could arouse a dead man (you like that one?). To eliminate the potential for cheating, Ronny stands with the front of his torso glued to the upright on an adjustable bench set to its highest setting. Each and every rep comes up to a full contraction of the medial deltoid head, with reps starting at 20 and proceeding down to 15 and 10 over the course of 3 sets. Other guys might feel like big shots flinging up a pair of 70s or 80s— but I don’t think Ronny is feeling too inadequate using 30-40 pounds in each hand and building round, capped delts that those clowns will never remotely approach in their lives.

 

3) Lateral Raise Machine
 Machines are often shunned for lateral raises, but Ronny feels this is a big mistake. “Using a lateral raise machine allows you to literally get directly to the deltoids without having to go through the arms as a lever,” he points out. He’s right. If, God forbid, any of you ever tear a biceps or triceps or fracture your wrist, you could still maintain some shoulder mass using a lateral raise machine. But why do two different lateral raise movements? “The front delts get worked all the time on presses for the chest and shoulders,” Rockel observes. “The side deltoids should get two exercises, because they can never be too full or round.”

 

4) Upright Rows
 Upright rows are a hybrid movement that works both the traps and the side and rear delts. You can hit more traps with a narrow grip or you can tap into more medial deltoid fibers with a wider grip. The line in which you pull also makes a difference. “For the traps, you want to pull straight up,” Rockel observes. “If you want to feel the shoulders working more, pull in an arc as if you are trying to go up and behind your shoulders.”

 

5) Behind-back Shrugs
 In the spirit of No Bull, I will let you know that Ronny hardly ever trains his traps directly, as he feels they seem to get more than adequate indirect stimulation from various exercises for the back and shoulders. But when he does, behind-back shrugs, as made famous by MD’s own eight-time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney, are his go-to exercise. “What I like about them is that I feel them in that lower trap area that regular shrugs with a barbell in front or dumbbells at your sides just doesn’t seem to reach,” Rockel explains.

 

6) Rear Lateral Machine
 Rear delts are considered so important to Ronny that he trains them in a different workout along with triceps. On top of that, he employs not only two different rear lateral movements, but he also uses two distinct grips on the first. That would be the machine many of us call the reverse pec deck. Ronny runs through his entire sequence of warm-ups and work sets first with his palms facing inward and thumbs up, then starts all over again with palms out and thumbs down. Once you try it both ways, you will also see that you do feel different aspects of the rear delts being hit. If you don’t feel you need that much rear delt work, try alternating those two grips from workout to workout.

 

7) Bent Dumbbell Laterals
 Just as he does with dumbbell side raises, Ronny makes use of an adjustable bench to keep his form honest and ensure that his rear delts are doing the work. This time he sets it at roughly the same angle you would use for incline dumbbell presses for chest, but flips over so he’s facedown. You definitely can’t go as heavy this way as compared to the freestanding bent version— and that ought to tell you something. Again, Rockel’s globular, 3-D delts are living proof that higher reps with moderate weights and an intense focus on feeling the muscle work delivers stunning results over time. If you insist on going ultra heavy and flinging weights around, don’t come crying to the message boards about how your delts are “stubborn” and you keep getting injured!

 

Get Ready To Rock
 Ronny’s spectacular delts will be one reason he rightfully stands as one of the pro scene’s longtime competitors. Considering his consistency and longevity thus far in the sport, and the fact that he’s one of the few top pros to have never experienced a training injury, it would behoove all of us to look again at his training methods to see what wisdom can be gleaned from them.

RONNY ROCKEL’S DELT ROUTINE
 Rear Delts
 Rear Lateral Machine (palms in)                1 x 30 (warm-up)
                                                                   2 x 15-20
                                                                   1 x 6, 6, 6 (drop set)
 Rear Lateral Machine (palms out)             2 x 15-20
                                                                   1 x 6, 6, 6 (drop set)
 Bent Dumbbell Laterals                             3 x 25, 20, 15

 Front and Side Delts, Traps
 Overhead Press                                         1 x 30 (warm-up)
                                                                    2 x 15-20
                                                                    1 x 6, 6, 6 (drop set)
 Dumbbell Lateral Raises                            3 x 20, 15, 10
 Lateral Raise Machine                               3 x 20, 15, 10
                                                                    1 x 6, 6, 6
 Upright Rows                                              1 x 30 (warm-up)
                                                                     3 x 30, 20, 15
                                                                     1 x 6, 6, 6
 Behind-back Barbell Shrugs                        3 x 25, 20, 15

Training Split                      AM                                                   PM
 Monday                        Chest, calves, cardio                      Biceps, forearms, cardio
Tuesday                        Back, abs, cardio                          Rear delts, triceps, cardio
Wednesday                   Quads and abs                            Hams, calves, cardio
Thursday                       Shoulders and abs
Friday                             Abs and cardio