Dave Draper’s Musclebuilding Q&A

I am currently having a problem with my lower lat development. The lower lat on my right side is more developed and fans out more than the lower lat on my left side. What is usually the cause of that and what can I do to bring the left side up to par with the right side?

Aside from an inherited flaw in your structure, you might be suffering from the incorrect function of the muscles resulting from improper muscle movement or function due to system (muscle, joint, insertion) injury, abuse or chronic poor habits. These actions can be present and observed in everyday activities and training performance.

Gray Cook’s recent most book, Movement, directed toward fitness and medical professionals, explains these recently explored and illuminated deficiencies in humankinds’ physical dilemma. You might want to consider the pathways to good health prescribed by Gray and his esteemed colleagues.

From the streets suggestion: Check your physical work habits. I suspect they may be one-sided, using mostly the right side. Is that a fair guess?

Rock on like flint and granite… Godspeed…  Ironore Dave

Long story short, I have been dieting for the past 10 weeks and it was going great! I was actually seeing my abdominal muscles clearly for the first time ever. Veins were showing everywhere and I actually look bigger! So anyway, I put myself into a bad situation at a BBQ this weekend. I think you know where this is going. It all started with one little cheeseburger and my mind thinking of every little excuse to try and justify why I should cheat for one single meal after the past 10 weeks of clean eating, cardio and heavy training. All downhill from there…. Can you help me get back on track?

I suspect having written down all your manners of screwing up has been a relief — sorta like a confession — and you’ve learned a big lesson: Never Again.

We all do this, more or less, on occasion and we pay the price: cuss ourselves, doubt ourselves, grumble and eventually recover stronger than ever by putting in the time at the gym and away from the refrigerator and cookie jar. Live ‘n Learn, as they say…

Do some jogs and sprints on your off days. Don’t flog yourself. Don’t lose muscle or joy by losing too much weight too fast or expecting too much too soon. Carry on the good fight with all your might… and new found wisdom.

Go… Godspeed… DD

I am currently experiencing trouble with motivation to train and eat clean. The strange thing is, I know how beneficial training is for my health and appearance, but over the past month junk food and being lazy is what the mind is telling me it wants and I am sick to death of it!! I’m ready to explode back into my training and kick the junk food habit once and for all. Dave, could you please recommend me a book, or any tips on motivation? I am desperate to reclaim the body I once had and any help you can please give me will be greatly appreciated.

Allow me to repeat myself. It’s worth it, it’s the best advice I have to offer: My book, Brother Iron Sister Steel, is a great presentation of straight talk for the bodybuilder of all ages. Fun to read, packed with photos from good old days, overflowing with training and nutrition information, musclebuilding tips and hints and motivation.

You can buy a slightly marred copy for 15 dollars. I suggest you get moving now; it only gets worse as time goes by.

A simple fun routine 3x a week to light the way. Do not expect too much and don’t try to catch up on lost time by joyless, frustrated training and dieting. Slow-but-sure and moderation are the pathways to walk. I also suggest you ignore all recent most bodybuilding input and supplementation. as it is hype and irrational and discouraging. Brother Iron is real and fun and rewarding…

Go… Godspeed… DD

I’m nearing 40, a fit at 5′4″ female, 120 pounds. I want to lose three inches off my waist. I run, spin cycle and do boot camp workouts, plus some free weight training. Can you help?

It’s hard to see how you’d have three inches to take off your waist unless you’re pretty light on muscle tissue. Would you consider dropping some of the cardio energy expenditure in favor of building up the back and shoulders? Sometimes the taper works better than the tape measure.

You sound like you’re doing all you can without sacrificing your health and excessively expending the precious time you have to appreciate and enjoy your achieved fitness. Any more exercise and attention to exercise and we have obsession, any less bodyweight and we have undernourishment.

I understand the drive and need and the engagement of the pursuit (hello, nutso bodybuilder), and also know the waste and recklessness and illusions of too much exercise and too much dieting. Too much is too much. It wears you down and out. Beware and be aware, Miss.

As long as you’re getting 100 grams of protein a day and eating sufficient carbs from lots of fresh salads and some fresh fruit, and hydrating and resting and relaxing like a good girl should, you’ll be fine.

Lift, live, learn and be lean… Godspeed… Dave

I have a very unique training question and haven’t been able to find much on the subject anywhere. I train the Olympic lifts 2 days a week and do some work capacity training 2 other days a week, mostly with burpees and kettlebell snatches for high reps.  Do you have any thoughts on how to incorporate some bodybuilding type training into a routine like this?

Such exercises can serve as a body builders as soon as you put a size-building slant on your training. This means higher reps on the oly lifts, more controllable weight, a tighter pace and a musclebuilding attention in your mind, pump and burn.

Your diet, your menu, might need modification.

Perhaps, when the time is right, when you get the urge, you can put the Olympic lifts aside for a month (change is good) and get out the ever-fruitful dumbbells for inclines presses, curls, triceps extensions, rows and pullovers for the adventure, research and experience. During this time you can evaluate their worth and improvise a way to mingle the two closely allied activities.

You’re equipped to do this… have fun… DD

I compete in one bodybuilding show a year as a natural athlete in order to keep focused and driven in my training. This winter I overdid the carbs and have gained a substantial amount of fat, so it is that time of year again to diet down. I it necessary for me to eat high carb or have a ‘cheat’ day once a week  to keep my metabolism from slowing down?

I was never a big fan of a cheat day. I like the steady diet very similar to yours all year round.

Go with your instincts, common sense and well-disciplined urges.

Go… Godspeed… DD

I recently read an article on bodybuilding.com about HIT training. I used the theory for 15 years when I competed. I am wondering now that I would like to return to competition what can I expect to gain from the HIT training in 3-6 months. You are the guru and I trust your advice so I’m all ears.

I’m no more or less a guru than you. I do my traditional training with a little spice and a lot of might, which is less lately than it was when I had an infant daughter and hair 45 years ago. I have always lifted for expression and wonder and the longed-for muscle and strength and functional results.

Honestly, I’ve never applied or advocated or understood or tried to understand HIT methodology. I’m not being negative, but I thought, like, why? Where’s the flow of the journey along the way?

Different sets and reps for different nuts and bolts.

Older, and at a later stage of training, you might find HIT to be less desirable, less productive and whole lot more injurious.

Another odd thing — I’m not a big fan of competition, not in the day, not today. I’m a lazy coward at heart. Give me the iron, the ascending weights, the descending reps, the supersets and the volume in an uncrowded gym and give time to blast it joyfully, even when it’s ugly.

So much for a sound and encouraging answer from Dave Drapeless, the Bomber.

Where’s brother Mike Mentzer when we need him?

Go… Have fun… God’s might… Dave

I’ve been training for two years and at 51 did my first Masters competition. My fellow iron head at the gym says to forget trying to build more muscle, just maintain what I have and get leaner for next comp. Is he right, or can I with the right diet and and dedicated workouts increase muscle still?

He’s not wrong, but I think trying to build bigger muscle is part of how we keep and improve what we have.

Don’t smother yourself in bulking up and power training and injury and disappointment, but lean on your training with growing in mind.

Devotion to getting lean-only is tedious and boring, and might cost muscle size. Let the diet and the jury decide when the proper time comes.

Press on, never quit… Dave

I continue to ponder the plight of the bodybuilder, strength-builder, or whatever…  In days gone by, the “bodybuilder” started out  in a search for strength.  You have so-stated many times and I agree, I wanted to be able to LIFT stuff!  It wasn’t how much… Then came the street-corner pharmacist with the close of the century…  the “bodybuilder” wanted size at any cost and the frenzied masses screamed for more.  Human nature… We’re not so stupid as we are victims of our own misguided egos.

You give this stuff a whole lot of thought. I agree.

Here’s a funny thing: I’ll bet I never exchanged more than a 100 words about training methodologies with any of my contemporary golden-age muscleheads — a few dozen with Frank Z, zero with Arnold or Franco, 50 or less with Zabo, 19 or 20 with big Mike Katz…

We met, we trained, we observed, we encouraged, we rooted and shared energy and we followed our own noses. Outside the gym we breathed our own air and licked our own wounds, we moaned and we rejoiced… we bumped fists.

That was me, that was us, that was then. I haven’t a clue who or what the muscleheads do today. It’s not that I don’t care, but I have my tin head full — sets and reps, action and form, today and later today… the bazaar and ludicrous is for like minds. This is not meant to be derogatory.

God loves us… Dave

After almost two years of training, you cannot tell I have any lats. I can’t spread them. Yet, I do rows with the 140 lb. dumbbells, max out our seated row cable machine at 325 lbs. for sets of 6 reps, do 1-arm rows on the seated Hammer Strength machine with 235 lb. on each arm, and do tons of wide grip pulldowns with anywhere from 120 lbs. to 230 lbs. Lots and lots of strength, but no size in the traditional lat sense. I can spread a pat of butter wider than I can spread my lats. Just a genetics issue???

Handling all that weight might not be the answer to muscle growth… Proper and more complete engagement of muscle is more important for size.

Often something is lost in the translation of heavy, thrusting, mind-blitzing action and the muscles are left without bearing their true extension-contraction load.

Just a thought… mix in the X-heavy workouts sparingly and go for hefty moderation in weight and improved focus and form and muscle recruitment with a 12, 10, 8, 6 rep scheme in your array of exercises.

dd

Most bodybuilders never really varied their workouts much whether they were volume trainers or HIT trainers. They might tweak a program with being more instinctive or amp it up when contest time was around the corner, but you knew roughly what they were going to do when they came to the gym. Few ever logged a training program, the question is to you: Did you logged workouts and did you have a program that you stuck with by and large?

I logged for a short period during one winter while training at the Muscle Beach dungeon, 8-10 weeks — mid-’60s. It had its purpose and value then. Ever since, I’ve followed more or less some version of the scheme I enjoyed then. Today my workout it’s a skeleton of what it was years ago, but it has the same taste and smell and silhouette.

Hey! Wait! I think it’s my shadow.

I don’t remember any bodybuilders with noticeable muscle ever logging their workouts. A few might have made notes at home. Guys who did log overtly looked like students, trained like students and disappeared before the ink dried.

Powerlifters scribbled away on pads as they reached for their chalk and inhaler, and for them logging works quite well, some might say mandatory even.
We press on, never alone… Dave

I try to stay physically strong and stay bulked up and don’t push the heavy weights any more. When I turn 60 in a few months I am going to try and begin preparing myself for a masters bodybuilding contest locally.

We Norsemen have got to stick together. You sound good, hardy and healthy.

You’ll probably say, “Who asked ya?” — but why ruin a good thing by amping up to enter a physique contest? I have a theory that training for a contest perverts (tough word) the purpose of training and drags an ironhead away from the iron rather than toward it. Train for you and the joy of training, not for them so much.

Good motivation comes from here, there and everywhere, but mostly from you and yourself. Contest training might add pepper where salt is more flavorful. Drive is good, driven is not so good. Save your skin (joints, tendons, shoulders, heart, temperament) for tough (tough’s a good word) workouts that go on and on cheerfully.

There’s a level of criticism we need not bear, a level that interrupts and weighs heavy upon us, when we sit in judgment of ourselves hoisting the weights from good to better. And then there’s the diet and skin tone and the unacceptable pinch of flesh around the belly: the shaving and color and oil and music and posing and the stage… Oh, my!

I’m just saying… and what about the wife and grandkids? Never met a pre-contest bodybuilder who wasn’t a bit of a mess.

So, welcome to IronOnline and davedraper.com. Laree will castigate me for sending you this note: Mind your own business, she’ll say, and rightly so. I’ll tell her you’re a Norseman and will laugh heartily.

We press on, by God… Dave

Being a personal trainer and in the trenches of gym warfare each day, I am noticing more and more people who claim they are not bodybuilders and yet talk for hours about shaping this, growing that and shrinking those. Do you feel  like there is (or has been) a public refusal for the common man to accept the bodybuilder within?

Reminds me of NASCAR fans who, after watching the great race, hop in their pickup and floor it.

Since my first toss with the iron I have rejected the ‘bodybuilder’ thing, preferring guy-who-lifts-weights instead.   I cringe at the vanity and concept and insipidness of “bodybuilder.” I wanted to be big, strong, tough and capable and functional (enough vanity in that quintet to sink the good ship Humility).

Perhaps the public at large dares not seek bodybuilding as it is a bit of narcissistic trip and is misunderstood beyond its bulging and ripped borders and has a bad rap (roid ‘em, cowboy) and it is presumptuous and pigeon-holing.

I think an association with fit and fitness, sport, health and wholesome and lean and strong is more appealing and agreeable and universal… unless you’re a Bodybuilder.

Go… Godspeed… Dave

What exactly do you think of the muscularity and shape of pro bodybuilders? I only ask because my personal opinion limits me to admiring the physiques of the ’60s and ’70s. Do you think that bodybuilding will ever go back to the semi-natural days where body types like Frank Zane will be on top again? Sgt from Baghdad

Oddly, I totally ignore the bodybuilding scene. I was there when I was there and gonzo since I left after the ‘70 Mr. World in NYC. I tripped over it again — oops — while building, owning and operating two cool World Gyms in my Santa Cruz locale between ‘89 and ‘05. I’ve heard of Ronnie Coleman…  Wow… the vague limit of my interest and curiosity.

I’m with you, and we’re not alone. Bodybuilding went on advanced life support after 1970, and anyway, I always considered myself a guy who lifts weight for fun and good, not a “bodybuilder.”

Where it goes from here is not clear, a question someone asked after the unloading of the A-bomb 60-some years ago.

I get it, cartoon muscularity, like I get 500 horsepower monster pickup trucks with six-foot tires and three roll bars and a fierce caged driver. Far out…

Hey, my good bud and former gym-partner is in Baghdad, might be a chin and dip away from you. You might look him up as he trains regularly at his post’s new gym. One of the good guys, though I have no doubt you are surrounded by many.

Carry on the good fight. God be with you… Dave

Regarding the functional training revolution, the question no one seems to be asking: Why do none of the  leading exponents appear fit, much less have any “functional” muscle to display? I think the public is seeking magic pills with a bedtime story. If it were only so simple!

You’re right. Functional training is not the tale of the musclebuilder and powerlifter. It’s for coaches and fitness educators. It’s for sport and fitness… and refurbishment.

Let’s face it, a bodybuilder would take a hammer to his head if he thought it would build muscle. He’d light himself on fire for striations and drink cyanide for muscularity.

Warning: Do Not Try These Methodologies. Proven Dangerous to One’s Health.

Sincerely… Draper

Everything is coming together better than I ever would have imagined last year at this time… all but my chest. Not bad, but not exactly what I was shooting for. I do bench presses, dumbbell flies and pushups, but it’s a very slow process compared to everything else. Any suggestions?

One-arm or two-arm cable-crossovers and focused flies on low inclines are tops for building, shaping and defining (and good luck plus hard work).

Forward-leaning dips help, low-pec focused stiff-arm dumbbell pullovers are a neat addition, various-degree incline dumbbell presses beat bench presses — safer, healthier, smarter for solid muscle mass.

Avoid declines, they only add to the dreaded hang in your pecs future.

Eat right, eliminate estrogen, burn fat and be happy.

dd

Jersey Dave which is better for mass, tri pushdowns or french presses? Also which is more effective, one-arm curls or two-arm?

I do all of the movements above and benefit from them all as they all offer something special, something different — angle, rhythm, focus, brain waves, feel, thrust, engagement of associated muscles — for complete muscle development and variation.

Mix and match….dd

I’m 15 weeks out from a bodybuilding show; I have never done the Showtime Cut Diet Final Week Prep. What do you think of doing a trial run contest week prep about 4 weeks out? I’m just a little nervous to try something for the first time the actual week of the contest. Also, I have never done a show that doesn’t start until 5:30 pm Saturday, meaning no morning show to peak for. What are your thoughts about peaking once in the pm? Water cut off time? Carbs? Salt?

I would only suggest the trial run if you have doubts and can’t help yourself… Might interrupt the musclebuilding flow and cost you in muscle and momentum. Best scenario: your training is going so well you have no worries and want to blast on…

About the peaking, it’s very personal, and depends on the contest condition you achieved:

Keep the nutrient-high carbs sufficient
Stay low on salt and drink modestly to serve your health and energy.
Chances are nerves and busyness and tendency to overtrain toward the end, your water retention will not be problematic.
Beware of overtraining and over-starving yourself toward the end.

A strong and sound mind plays a major role in muscle building and stage presentation and performance. Tough, cuz most bodybuilders are as secure as Yemen and Afghanistan.

Think on these things… Relax and be strong and courageous… do your job, get your posing and music down… visualize success performances, never failure…

Then, read this if it gets down to the wire and things are going as planned.

dd

I don’t know if you’ll ever share the reasons for dropping from the public eye way back in the early ’70s, but every man has his choices to make. Sometimes they’re made for him.

The reasons are simple:

• Being very good is fun; being the best is too serious
• No money while you’re trying to get there, no money if you do
• Too much ego and too many egos in the immediate atmosphere
• I enjoyed using my muscle and strength as a function in my work-life (counterproductive for championship)
• Too self-centered, which imposed sacrifice on those I loved and liked, including me (time, dedication, dieting, costs)
• I admire muscle and strength building, whereas bodybuilding is a rub…

I forget the other reasons… and excuses…

We lift, by God… DD

In doing lat pulldowns on  the machine, after I do the overhand grip  I superset it with the underhand grip.  Is that okay or counterproductive?

It’s fine. Do the combo as you like, as long as they “feel good.” Don’t do them cuz you have to cuz you said so. Be nice to your insertions and your dog and your wife.

Lift, live, learn and grow… Godspeed… Dave