JJay’s BodyBlog

It has taken me since February of last year, but finally I am going to take a stand on this.

I can no longer sit by and let this kind of behaviour go without giving my 2 cents..

I am here to discuss bodyspace, but with an emphasis being placed on the top female profile section. 

When bodyspace first started, it was full of athletic individuals and people who have made fantastic progress, with good advice and lots of solid posts on the forums that you could look back on and take nutritional and training advice from, even get one on one help from them.

Soon after, people started abusing the system of bodyspace..

Certain individuals would spam their picture in the hopes of getting into the top profiles.
They would put a link to their profile wherever possible on the internet.
In the end, people who really had no knowledge or background in bodybuilding or fitness in general were in the top profiles.

Crime? Maybe not, but it made it a lot harder for people to get in touch with the real individuals of bodyspace and bodybuilding.com  Anyway, a little more time after that, it seemed women had latched onto an idea.

It went a little something like this, 

“Hey, maybe if I show some full on ass and tit, I can suddenly become a top 6 profile and become the attention whore I always dreamed of becoming” 

And so.. the bodyspace pornstar brigade was born. 

Ok, some of them have muscle tone and a little fitness. Some of them look like they train somewhat.. However, they are not posting a close up shot of their behind because it shows off their glutes, they are doing it for attention. 

There are some really great female athletes and transformations on bodyspace and they are being cheapened by the fact that if you are a female with no muscle tone, transformation, or athletic experience, you can post a picture of your boobs or ass and get a top six profile spot and exposure. 

This is ugly. The top six has ranged from having a 17 year old girl showing a little too much skin, to women constantly spamming the latest picture section with pictures of their bottoms and breasts.
And bodyspace has let this continue. 

Why do I say this? Not just because of the above, but because it cheapens women in general.

The whole fitness industry for women is cheapened because some are willing to basically become pornstars to get ahead. 

I am saying it now, bodyspace needs to take a stand and do something about this because so many people, myself included, hardly ever visit anymore because of the amount of dirt being posted. 

At least one male member of this site needs to stand up and be heard to let the real female athletes they have support and should not have to cheapen themselves. An example of my above rant can be seen below (today’s top is what pushed me over the edge - the top 2 listed below):  http://bodyspace.bodybuilding.com/MissStacey/
http://bodyspace.bodybuilding.com/TooSeXyKatie4u/
http://bodyspace.bodybuilding.com/thgirlnxtdr/
http://bodyspace.bodybuilding.com/Brittany0G/
http://bodyspace.bodybuilding.com/eurasiansurgeon/
http://bodyspace.bodybuilding.com/kimyuba/ And one 17 year old:
http://bodyspace.bodybuilding.com/sarahmusclegal/ (was 17 at the time of posting)

Now there are go-go dancers getting into the top six? Whatever next - real life pornstars?       

Ok, so the reason i’m posting this is because I recently saw a picture and thread of a bodybuilder who is a few weeks out from a pro bodybuilding contest.
This thread had over 3 pages of discussion on how amazing this guy looks - a total beast!
I looked at the pictures and simpy shook my head.
A guy with huge arms, huge chest, huge shoulders, huge lats, huge legs… And huge waist.. Oh.. but the waist is small compared to a lot of pro’s.. And that makes it absoultely fine!?

In my honest opinion, a champion bodybuilder is a guy who would not look out of place as a greek god statue. The kind of guy you’d look at and think he had perfect lines, perfect symmetry, strong as a bull, yet fast as a cat.

When I see most pro bodybuilders of today.. I think they look like they could eat mcdonalds dry, or would do well in a food eating contest, or play the role of a mutant in a horror movie.. Oh yeah, and could lift a lot of heavy stuff.

 This is what I call a bodybuilder:
http://www.classicbodybuilders.com/bodybuilder/frankzane/frankzane5.jpg

http://www.classicbodybuilders.com/bodybuilder/frankzane/frankzane15.jpg

Symmetry, lines, small waists, and broad shoulders.
Clothed and every day life you’d think of someone like Frank Zane to bevery athletic and had nice shape. Posed up and shirtless, you’d think he was a god.

Some where down the line we have lost the ‘greek god’ like look and have adopted the ‘comic book’ over exaggerated style of physique.

Go back 40 or so years ago and you would see a completely different environment inside gym walls compared to today. The main difference not just being the questionable clothing attire, but also the way in which we train.

What is this difference in training? Volume/Frequency.

Perhaps the greatest champion of them all, a man who has been admired by numerous other bodybuilders, used the word and training meaning a great deal in his career, which has gone from bodybuilding, movies, straight through to politics. His hard work most certainly paid off (and I’m sure you all know of you I talk).Somewhere down the line, we have been scared off from the volume and onto a lower volume plan.  The argument is that champions of past could work with higher volume because they may or may not have been using anabolic steroids.
This really holds no water.. Even if they did have certain anabolics, their training would still have had to been effective for them to achieve results.

Below, after researching and agreeing with Chris Aceto on such matters of volume training, I’m going to discuss a better approach to training.EFFECTIVE VOLUME TRAINING:
Effective training is all about knowing your body, how it responds and getting the most out of it. For that to happen, changes must constantly be adapted to training to help you keep growing/responding.
Low volume/brief training (a smaller number of sets) helps the body to recover and fill out - it rebounds and recovers quicker, giving the muscles more roundness and fullness. However, to notice these changes and effects, you must have been in a state of high volume 3-4 or so weeks previous to it.Here is the thing with volume: you grow and then you hit a plateau.. Your body no longer grows or responds to your training – this is where reducing the volume and switching up your training to low volume for a couple of weeks becomes effective!
You get the initial growth from your HIGH VOLUME training and then your recovery from your few weeks of LOW VOLUME training.
A smart man takes two successful things and combines them, making his wine out of the water!

Think of this as an example:
A lifter in the gym begins his training (we’ll call him Klaus). He does a lot of volume/set work…  and after 5-6 weeks he keeps at it and notices he isn’t getting any more results from his training.
A fellow lifter in the gym (we’ll call him mountain man) shakes his head and tells him he is doing way too many sets and that he should cut back.
Bingo! Klaus cuts back the number of sets he does in the gym and he gets the initial results from HIT training.
The thing is, he is not really growing.. He is recovering. The reduced volume has allowed him to recover. His damaged muscle fibres (from the high volume training) have a chance to repair/GROW and he begins to look fuller, his muscles have more roundness to them.
Then.. disaster strikes! Klaus decides he likes these initial results in the way his muscles look and changes his program to follow purely this  low volume route.
 
Bottom line being; Higher amounts of volume/sets per body part, a good diet that is high in protein and can support your training, and a good amount of sleep will give you great results.
When you feel your body begin to fail/stagnate, start the next week and the next few weeks after that under the low volume method for recovery. Volume should not be taboo.

I will spend the majority of my comeback from injury bulking cycle putting it into practice.

So… let’s say you are like me. You visit the gym 5 times a week, you workout every muscle group from your shoulders to your calves. You workout your arms once a week and you never put them before any other muscle group.

But, having said this, you walk into a bar, meet some buddies and hang out. You aren’t in the gym anymore.. You are in a bar or out with friends wearing a t-shirt and a pair of jeans..
What do you think is the first thing about your body/physique that will get mentioned?
‘How big are those arms’, ‘flex your biceps’, etc.

Regardless of working out your whole body, people are always going to want to know how to get a big chest, arms, abs, etc. Why? Because those are the ’show and tell’ muscles…and probably because arms have always been a genetic standing point for myself.

Anyways, enough of that.

Here it is:

Working out the arms:

What we are working out (the muscles of the arms):

Biceps: The bicep is made up of two parts (known as heads) - the short head and the long head. The short is the inner part, the long is the outter part. All my exercises will take into account each part of the biceps and tricep muscle strands.

Triceps: The tricep is the largest part of the arm. It is made up of three heads or strands of muscle tissue and takes up around three fifths of your upper arm - It is bigger than the bicep and should therefore be a large focus in your goal to get toned, defined, or even larger arms. Many people think the bicep is the only muscle of the arm.

How we work them:
Biceps are usually worked in a curling method. Either curling a dumbbell or barbell from our waists and up to just below are chins. Chin ups with a pullup bar are technically also another curling method exercise for biceps.
Triceps are usually worked in a pressing method.
However, all exercises that work both parts will be mentioned below.
Why we work them:
This one is easy. We work them in the gym because lifting weights breaks down and shocks our muscle tissue. I could go on about myosin/actin filaments and the creatine phosphate system, etc. but the aim here is wanting to know how we get big arms…. So, once we go home, rest and eat (protein for muscle rebuilding, carbohydrates for energy reserves) our muscles repair and rebuild stronger and bigger over the course of the year.

An arm routine:

**Do the bicep exercise, all sets and reps and then move onto the tricep exercise. Every other week do the first tricep exercise before the first bicep exercise, and follow it that way**

Bicep exercise:
Barbell curls 3 sets of 8-10 reps
http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/Biceps/BBCurl.html

Tricep exercise:
Closegrip bench press 3 sets of 8-10 reps
http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/Triceps/BBCloseGripBenchPress.html

Bicep exercise:
Seated dumbbell curls 2 sets of 8-12 reps
http://www.shapefit.com/biceps-exercises-seated-dumbbell-curls.html

Tricep exercise:
Overhead two arm or one arm tricep extensions 2 sets of 8-12 reps
http://graphics.jsonline.com/graphics/alive/img/mar06/motionG031906.gif
http://www.totalfitnesssolutions.com/overhead1.jpg

Bicep exercise:
Cable curls or bent over concentration curls 3 sets of 10-12 reps **alternate between these two exercises every other week**
http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/Biceps/CBCurl.html
http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/Brachialis/DBConcentrationCurl.html

Tricep exercise:
Pushdowns (either with a straight bar or a rope) 3 sets of 10-14 reps
http://www.shapefit.com/triceps-exercises-triceps-pushdowns-with-rope-attachment.html (don’t lean too far forward or you will work your chest more than your triceps) keep a little straighter.
http://www.shapefit.com/triceps-exercises-triceps-pushdowns.html

—-
I personally find it best and most manageable to train both biceps and triceps together, although you can effectively train triceps with chest (they are both pressing exercise body parts and both work the same muscle groups on larger or smaller scales) and biceps with back (for the same reasons).

I prefer to work biceps with triceps because I can flow through the exercises better. The pump is also greater.

Most importantly:

Use correct form. Do not swing the weight about, lift in a controlled way and do the same for lowering the weight. You don’t have to do this really slowly and strictly, but do not swing enough so that your back is arching and your shoulders are doing more of the exercise than your arms! Just enough so that you are working the arms and using enough weight to make them grow.
Having said this, throw in a few ‘cheating sets’ (more weight, less form) to shock the triceps and biceps into additional growth.

After that, stretch out, go home, eat and rest.. And watch your arms shape up & grow.

Thanks for reading,

Jay

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