The True Victor
By Victor Martinez
First, I’d like to say that I’m a HUGE fan and I’ve watched all of your uploaded videos on MD. How long are you going to keep competing and what do you think your chances are for this year’s Mr. O? Even if you think your placing was fair at the Arnold, I still think symmetry is much better than striated glutes and a blocky waist (no offense to Kai). I had you first all the way, bro.
I appreciate your support, but I happen to agree with my second place to Kai at the Arnold. I was off, especially in the quads, and Kai was on. How will I do at the Olympia? It doesn’t matter how I think I will place, not now and not at the show. All I can do is look the best I can and after that it’s all up to the judges. Sometimes it doesn’t go the way you want, obviously. But I never cry about it, because that never accomplishes anything except to make you look like a whiny little bitch.
What I do is take all that anger and rage and put it into my workouts. I want to look so great next time that they will have no other choice except to give me first place. They expect a lot out of me based on what I’ve done in the past in winning the Arnold and taking second at the Olympia, so I have to make sure I give them my best. As far as how long I will keep competing, that’s easy— until I am satisfied that I’ve done what I needed to do in the sport. I have to win at least one Mr. Olympia title before I’m done. I know I have it in me, so I can’t quit until I’ve made that happen.
I saw a video clip of you where you suggested doing side lateral raises at the end of a chest session to help bring up stubborn shoulders. Would you use just that exercise, or would you throw in another exercise, too? Best of luck at the Olympia, it’s going to be a tight one this year and I can’t wait for it!
I would pick just one exercise and do four sets of it. Lateral raises are the best for shoulders after a chest workout. If you tried to do overhead pressing for shoulders after doing a bunch of flat and incline presses for your chest, your performance would be pretty crappy. But since your shoulders are nice and warmed up, laterals are perfect. You isolate the side heads, which are the part most responsible for width and that round, ‘capped’ look. I’ve also done this at other times with areas I felt were lagging.
For a while I would do four sets of barbell curls for biceps at the end of a back workout, or rear lateral raises when I wanted to bring up my rear delts a little more. Back training warms both areas up very well so that all you need are a few intense sets. In your case, you might be able to get away with a couple sets of front raises too, but you have to be careful with shoulders. They get overtrained easier than you think, because you use them for so many different exercises. Even when they aren’t really working directly, your shoulders are helping you stabilize and assist in everything from squats to deadlifts to curls. Guys who have injured their shoulders badly have told me how shocked they were to find out just how many things the shoulders are involved in that you would never even suspect.
And finally, thanks for the well wishes— a little luck never hurt anybody!
Just bought Dark Matter today and I have a quick question. It says not to have a shake or anything with it but it only contains 12 grams of protein as amino acids, which is supposedly equal to 40 grams of regular protein. I usually have 60 grams because I am a bigger guy— 260 pounds, but not super lean. At your size, do you consume a shake also or just the Dark Matter?
Don’t ask me to get too technical about this, because I don’t wear a white lab coat, but amino acids like the ones in Dark Matter and other recovery shakes are absorbed faster and more completely even than whey protein. They are the ‘raw building blocks’ of protein, so that would make sense. I take Dark Matter right after the workout. Then, at some point around 30 to 60 minutes later, depending on my appetite, I have a serving of Probolic shake, also by MHP, that has 60 grams of protein. I don’t put any extra carbs in that, because there were already carbs in the Dark Matter.
And also, I will be eating a meal with a lean protein source like chicken breast or tilapia fish with a complex carb like brown rice or a sweet potato in about another hour anyway. I would not suggest adding anything like protein powder to Dark Matter or any other recovery shake. They are already formulated to include the optimal amount of protein that you need. Amino acids are also absorbed much better when you don’t have another protein source coming in at the same time to compete with it for digestion. Besides that, I think most guys would get a pretty bad stomachache if they tried to drink a recovery shake and a big protein shake at the same time!
Dips kill my rotator cuffs, but I find I can do close-grip presses with no shoulder pain. I usually train on my own and hate asking anyone for a spot because I usually have my headphones on and keep to myself. I’d rather not get too social because then it takes you twice as long to work out. Anyway, my question is, do you think close-grip presses on the Smith machine can be as effective as the free bar or an EZ-curl bar? I guess I could set up a flat bench in the power rack to use a bar, but with an EZ-curl bar, which is actually a lot easier on my wrists, I definitely need someone to hand it to me and take it away once I am into my heavy work sets.
First of all, you need to address the issue with your rotator cuffs. If you ignore it, it’s only going to get worse and eventually you could experience an injury bad enough to knock you out of heavy shoulder and chest training for the rest of your life. Physical therapy is one option, but a lot of bodybuilders I know have had success with something called Active Release Technique. On the official website,
www.activerelease.com, which also has a list of practitioners so you can find one near you, they give this definition:
“ART is a patented, state-of-the-art soft tissue system/movement based massage technique that treats problems with muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia and nerves. Headaches, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, shin splints, shoulder pain, sciatica, plantar fasciitis, knee problems, and tennis elbow are just a few of the many conditions that can be resolved quickly and permanently with ART. These conditions all have one important thing in common: they are often a result of overused muscles.”
Acupuncture is another treatment you can look into. But whatever you do, don’t just keep trying to train around it and hope it will get better on its own. Chances are very slim that it will. As for close-grips, I prefer an EZ-bar myself for the same reason as you. I also will use a standard barbell in a bench. When I use the Olympic bar, I don’t use as close of a hand space— maybe three inches closer than shoulder-width on each side. I also won’t lower the bar to as low a point on my torso with a regular barbell.
With the EZ-curl bar, I might tough the bar to my top row of ribs when doing close-grip presses. With the Olympic bar, I lower it to a little under my nipples. If you use an extremely close grip with an Olympic bar, you will wreck your wrists fast. If you try to lower it too far down your torso, you will jack up your shoulders.
Now, let’s talk about that Smith machine. I absolutely would not recommend using the Smith for close-grip presses. Just about everybody has the idea in their heads that the Smith machine is a safer alternative to a barbell for just about any exercise. Not true! In many cases, the fact that it restricts your movement and locks you into a very specific movement track makes it more dangerous than a barbell. At least with a barbell, you can naturally adjust any movement to your particular frame. Plus, with some exercises, pushing or pulling in a straight line is not the natural type of movement, and you wind up putting a lot of stress on your joints, tendons, and ligaments. Either start getting just friendly enough to ask for a spot (or give a spot if someone else needs one) so you can use the EZ bar, or work inside the power rack on a bench with safety pins. Whatever you do, stay the hell away from the Smith machine for close-grip presses.
After reading your articles, I decided to try eating rice and beans with chicken breast even though I’m not Spanish— now I love it! I eat it two or three times every day and I have put on 10 pounds of muscle in just the last three months, without doing anything different with my training. The only thing is, the gas I get is horrendous. Seriously, I can light candles and spray air freshener like crazy, even open the windows, and my apartment still reeks of farts. Is this because my body isn’t used to ethnic food? Will it get better eventually? If not, do you know of any products out there that really work to cut down gas? It’s so bad I can’t ever have anybody over!
Sorry to say, but it doesn’t matter how long you have been eating beans for— they still make you erupt with gas! It’s the same with some other vegetables like cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower. They all contain a type of sugar called oligosaccharides. For some reason, God gave us all kinds of digestive enzymes but forgot to include one that breaks down oligosaccarides. Once they pass the small intestine and move into the large intestine, bacteria go to work on them. A by-product of these bacteria breaking down those sugars is the release of gas. Once enough of this gas has built up, it’s gotta come out. I don’t know what to tell you except that I have heard the product Beano® can help cut down on the toots. Either that, or you could go live out in the woods where you can gas it up and nobody but the chipmunks and the deer will ever know.
Accueil 
yep that's a possibility but damm that would be a problem for some of us here on the forum 
