Juan Morel: My 14 Most Productive Lifts!

Get Growing with the 2015 NY Pro Champ

Note: The following was written after Juan Morel won the New York Pro three years ago. This weekend, he will attempt to earn a second title there. As one of the most massive specimens in the sport, we thought it would be useful to revisit some of his training methods.

The Dominican Who Doubled in Size

This will be hard for many of you to believe, but the pro bodybuilder nicknamed “Diesel” was not a big guy when he started training. Growing up in New York, he was actually a lanky kid who was one of the best handball players in the city before turning his attention to boxing. Juan started lifting weights at age 20 to develop more power in the ring, and after two years he had grown from 150 to 170 pounds at 5 foot 11— hardly a beast. It was when he decided at age 22 in 2007 to become a bodybuilder that the magic really started to happen. Within three months, Morel tipped the scales at 200 pounds, and was on his way to becoming the massive man we all know today. From that very humble starting point of 150 pounds, Juan has literally doubled his weight, hitting a very solid 300 pounds or more in the off-season and winning the recent New York Pro at 270. Those among you who yearn to be bigger— and isn’t that all of you? — should be interested in what Juan did to pack on all that freaky size. Of course there was a tremendous amount of eating involved, especially since Morel has a naturally fast metabolism, but there were also thousands of gut-busting workouts. I spoke with him after he won the New York Pro, a contest in which he had progressed from fourth, to third and second place each year until he won it on his fourth try, to find out which exercises have played the most important roles in building his amazing physique.

1. Flat Barbell Bench Press

History: This was an exercise Juan was doing from day one, when he had only a vague awareness of bodybuilding and hadn’t yet become interested in it. Wherever you go, in any place where weights are lifted, the bench press has an esteemed reputation. “This is the main mass and strength builder for the chest,” Morel says. “If you want a big chest, you have to bench press just like all the greats of the past did: Arnold, Sergio, Lee Haney, Ronnie and so on.”

Results: Juan’s chest was a weak point in his early years of lifting, somewhat flat and shallow compared to his shoulders and back. “It took a while, but years and years of bench pressing helped me build the thickness I was after.” Most training experts firmly believe that strength and size are closely related, so it should come as no surprise that Juan’s bench press for reps progressed over the years from 135 to 500 pounds.

Tips or adjustments: For any exercise, everyone should experiment to find the best way to perform it so that you feel it maximally in the target muscle, just as Juan did with the bench press. “I touch my chest at the bottom of every rep, but I only go up about three-quarters of the way, never to lockout,” he tells us. “That allows me to keep the tension on my chest instead of letting my shoulders and triceps take over at any point. The pumps I get this way are so much better than years ago when I used to lock out my arms like they tell you to.”

2. Incline Barbell Bench Press

History: “I always did incline presses, but flat benching was my main thing for a long time,” Juan admits. Only when he took an honest look at his chest did he realize his upper chest thickness was lagging behind, and from that day onward inclines would be the star of the show on chest day. Typically, he now does two or even three incline pressing movements and just one flat press in a given workout.

Results: Hard work under the incline bar with sets as heavy as 405 for 12 reps did their intended job, filling in Juan’s upper chest until it matched the thickness of his mid and lower pecs. “It pops up nice and high in my side chest shot now,” he adds. “And that’s what I was trying to achieve.”

Tips or adjustments: Juan’s best advice on how to get the most out of incline presses can be summed up in four simple words: “keep your chest high.” By putting a slight arch in your lower back, rolling your shoulders back and down toward your waist, and popping the chest up, you shift as much stress to the upper pecs as possible.

3. Pull-Ups

History: Pull-ups are one of those ubiquitous exercises that just about anyone who has ever worked out does at one time or another, and Juan was no exception. “I always wanted a wide back, because I felt my shoulders and back were too narrow.” When he started doing pull-ups, he found he could only manage two or three in spite of his greatest effort. “I had the goal of getting 10 reps of pull-ups in a row,” he says. It took him six months to accomplish that feat. “But man, was I psyched when I got that!”

Results: Pull-ups did make Diesel’s back wider, and he feels that all bodybuilders should pay their dues at the pull-up bar before they even think about doing lat pulldowns. “Pull-ups are basic, they’re very tough to do properly, and they work the entire upper back hard.”

Tips or adjustments: Though many bodybuilders like to switch up different grips for pull-ups, such as the standard wide grip, underhand or neutral grip with hands facing each other, Morel feels wide-grip pull-ups pack the most punch. “For me, they work better than those other variations, so I only do them with a wide grip.” Juan keeps a constant piston motion to his reps until the final rep, where he will hold himself in the top position as long as he can and flex the upper back muscles against the resistance of his bodyweight pulling him downward.

4. Barbell Rows

History: When he first started training, Juan trained more along the lines of a powerlifter and did only basic exercises. Barbell rows were one of that select handful. “For my back, it was pretty much just these, pull-ups and deadlifts for a couple of years to build a base.”

Results: “My back became much thicker from barbell rows,” Juan says. “And that happened pretty much in proportion to how much stronger I got at them.” For inquiring minds, that eventually became 405 for 12 or more reps, and 495 for six.

Tips or adjustments: To wring every last drop of back thickness out of barbell rows, Morel does both the standard overhand grip as well as the underhand grip popularized by Dorian Yates over 20 years ago, usually in the same workout. “I feel the underhand grip working a little lower down the lats than the overhand one,” he explains. “The back is such a big and complex muscle group that you have to mix things up to keep seeing gains.”

5. Deadlifts

History: As we just discussed, deadlifts were a staple from Juan’s first day at the gym, and they continue to enjoy star status in his back workouts today.

Results: Deadlifts may be thought of by most as a back exercise, but they are actually the closest thing to a “whole body movement” there is. Not only does the entire structure of the back from traps to lumbars contribute to squatting down, pulling a heavy bar off the ground and standing up with it, but also the quads, hams, glutes and even the rear delts and biceps. “Deadlifts have done so much for my physique that I can’t imagine ever not doing them,” Juan adds.

Tips or adjustments: That being said, just this past off-season, Juan made a major change to the way he deadlifts. Until then, he had consistently worked up to singles and doubles with as much as 700-800 pounds, more along the lines of a powerlifter than a bodybuilding mentality. Late last year, Morel made the decision to stop doing any fewer than eight reps, both to provide more time under tension and to avoid the possibility of injury. “I still pyramid up to doing eight reps with 600, then always like to finish off with 500 for 15 reps to really burn out my back,” he explains.

6. Military Press

History: Juan had always done military presses, as they were among that select few basic movements he knew were essential early on. But Juan did most of his in a way few modern bodybuilders even try, standing. It wasn’t out of any devotion to old-school methods, rather an accident of fate. “I was waiting for the seated military bench and rack one day when the gym was crowded, and I just got sick of waiting and loaded up a bar to clean from the floor and press.”

Results: Heavy overhead pressing helped turn Juan’s shoulders from a weak point on his physique to a decided advantage.

Tips or adjustments: In 2013, Morel found that standing military presses were giving him severe elbow tendinitis, and from that point on moved to doing his presses on the Smith machine, pressing both to the front and behind the neck. “Barbells gave me excellent results, but I have also continued to make gains on the Smith machine.”

7. Dumbbell Lateral Raises

History: Presses certainly helped create the melon delts Juan sports today, but he gives equal if not greater credit to lateral raises. “My shoulders were droopy, and they needed caps badly,” he explains. He didn’t fall in love with laterals until a couple of years into bodybuilding, but from then on he’s consistently done no fewer than six sets of them per shoulder workout.

Results: The results are obvious. Plenty of guys have big shoulders, but very few have the type of exaggerated roundness and fullness you see here with Juan’s medial deltoids.

Tips or adjustments: Until 2007, Juan had been seeing almost zero results from lateral raises, and arrived at the conclusion that maybe trying to go as heavy as possible on them wasn’t working. “I never even felt my side delts working or got a pump,” he reveals. Focusing on the feeling in his shoulders and chasing the most full-blown pump possible, Juan went much lighter and finally was pleased to see his shoulders start filling out almost immediately. “A lot of people think I’m kidding when I say I don’t go heavier than a pair of 25s, but that’s the truth,” Juan confesses. “I used to use twice the weight and had half the size in my shoulders that I do now, so what does that tell you?”

8. Bent Dumbbell Rear Laterals

History: No bodybuilder who even dreams of being a top pro should neglect his rear delts, and Juan knew way back that rear laterals were the bread-and-butter movement for them. “I had it in my head that I would leave no stone unturned, and I wanted 3-D delts. That meant rear delts that matched the front and sides.”

Results: Unlike many guys, Juan’s rear delts never lagged behind. Thanks to his dedication to hitting those bent rear dumbbell laterals, he was never in a position where he had to play catch-up.

Tips or adjustments: Juan doesn’t have any unique performance style for his rear laterals, but he does arrange them differently than most of us. “Instead of doing them on their own for a bunch of sets, I usually superset them with lateral raises.” When you are chasing the pump on shoulder day the way Juan does, this is a very effective idea, and a time-saver as well.

9. EZ-Bar Curls

History: “For a long time, I was stubborn and did my curls with a straight bar even though they were giving me forearm splints, which are pretty similar to shin splints.” Eventually, Morel couldn’t ignore the fact that he felt no pain on the rare occasions he curled with an EZ-curl bar instead. From then on, he switched to the cambered bar and no longer experienced agonizing pain in his forearms.

Results: Juan’s biceps flourished thanks to many tough sets ground out with an EZ-curl bar grasped in his hands. They actually grew to the point where they made Morel’s triceps seem somewhat weak in comparison a couple of years ago.

Tips or adjustments: Juan’s best tip here mirrors what he had discovered about lateral raises. “The biceps are a small muscle group,” he begins. “They don’t need a ton of weight, and if you use a ton of weight on curls, there’s no way you will give them the stimulation they need to grow. You’ll be working more shoulders and lower back than biceps. Use a weight you can control and feel the biceps working with.”

10. Skull-Crushers

History: Since this is the most basic of all triceps movements, it’s one that Juan was doing all along. Because his elbow tendinitis still occasionally flares up and makes these feel like there is broken glass grinding around in there, he will take breaks of several months at a time from them.

Results: “For years, these were my go-to triceps exercise, and they did the job well,” Morel says. “I just can’t do them all the time anymore.”

Tips or adjustments: To provide variation within the same exercise, Juan will do three sets differently, lowering the bar to different points for each. “On the first set, I lower to my nose, the second one is down to my forehead, and the third set, the one where I feel the greatest stretch, is where I lower the bar just past my head.”

11. Cable Pushdowns

History: Though cables played only a minor role in his arm training over the first phase of his bodybuilding career, they have taken on a greater prominence over the last year as his elbow pain made barbell and dumbbell extension movements impossible at times.

Results: “I am able to get a great pump with pushdowns without aggravating my elbows,” Morel states. “I had it in my head that heavy free weights were the only way I was going to get my triceps to grow, but I found that it’s just not true.”

Tips or adjustments: As with other exercises, Juan has found that going heavy doesn’t give him the best results. Of course he still uses weights that most of us probably couldn’t budge, but the reps are around 12-15 per set and the overall volume is high. “I find this blows my triceps up like balloons,” he notes. “And that’s my goal when I train them now.”

12. Front Squats

History: Juan never did a lot of front squats for years, as he was too busy being a wrecking machine on squats. At one point he was able to squat 750 pounds for a couple of reps. But as the years went by, he couldn’t help but notice that his glutes and hams seemed to be getting more out of squats than his quads. And worse, all the comments about his physique once he turned pro were about how his quads were mediocre compared to his massive upper body. Three years ago, he started backing off squats and doing more fronts, and a year ago he stopped squats completely.

Results: “Front squats put way more emphasis on my quads, and they started catching up,” Juan reports happily. This year, many of the observations about his physique when he won the New York Pro were that his quads finally matched the rest of him. “That was a good feeling,” he says. “My quads can still get better, but I know they are on the right track now.”

Tips or adjustments: Morel concedes that front squats can be a very awkward movement that takes time and effort to master. “You just can’t give up,” he advises. “It took me probably a whole year of doing them before I figured out the best way to position the bar across my shoulders, the best way for me to grip the bar, and so on.”

13. Leg Press

History: For most of the time Juan has been bodybuilding, he has shared the same mentality as most of his meathead brethren— load that sucker up with plates! As you might imagine, he was able to do reps with anywhere from 12 to 15 plates per side and even a few more on some occasions when he was feeling especially strong.

Results: As with heavy squats, Juan never saw the level of results he was hoping for with the leg press. Not to say they didn’t contribute to more overall bulk, but it still wasn’t up to expectations.

Tips or adjustments: Around the same time Juan gave up squats for front squats, he made the decision to go higher on reps for the leg press. Instead of 10-12 reps with all the weight the machine would hold, he backed down to eight plates per side and cranked out sets of 40 or more reps. Instantly he knew he was on to something, as the pump in his quads was like nothing he had ever felt before on that machine.

14. Standing Calf Raises

History: Juan has a love/hate relationship with calf training. Though he has been generously blessed with gifted genetics for most of his other muscle groups, calves are clearly something he has never been able to take for granted like some, and never will.

Results: “My calves have come up since I started training, obviously, but they are stubborn,” Juan informs us. “I refuse to give up on them or stop training them as hard as I can.”

Tips or adjustments: One thing that Juan has found made a small but noticeable difference was in upping the frequency of his calf training to three times a week. “I think the calves are a very tough, dense muscle that are used to a lot of work already,” he explains. “Working them once a week isn’t going to cut it unless you were born with big calves.”

Those are the 14 exercises that contributed the most to the transformation of Juan Morel from a 150-pound pipsqueak to a 300-pound aesthetic freak. Will they all be the ideal choices for you? Maybe, and maybe not. It’s up to you to experiment with a wide array of movements and variations thereof, figuring out what works and then what works even better with minor adjustments to suit your particular structure and biomechanics. Don’t continue doing things that aren’t producing results, and never be afraid to try new exercises and techniques that could spur new gains. Let this be a lesson that bodybuilding isn’t about copying what someone else does, it’s about finding your own path and having the confidence to stay on it no matter what everyone else is doing around you.

Ron Harris got his start in the bodybuilding industry during the eight years he worked in Los Angeles as Associate Producer for ESPN’s “American Muscle Magazine” show in the 1990s. Since 1992 he has published nearly 5,000 articles in bodybuilding and fitness magazines, making him the most prolific bodybuilding writer ever. Ron has been training since the age of 14 and competing as a bodybuilder since 1989, and maintains the popular website www.ronharrismuscle.com, most notable for its blog “The Daily Pump.” He lives with his wife and two children in the Boston area.

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