Written by Ron Harris
07 August 2019

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Kai Greene's Top 10 Fundamentals of Bodybuilding Part 1

 

Kai Greene is one of a kind. The three-time Arnold Classic champion may or may not ever win the Mr. Olympia title, but regardless, he will go down as a man with a unique physique, a unique outlook on life and also his own special outlook on training. Talking about workouts can be rote and mechanical with many bodybuilders, but with Kai it becomes at times deeply philosophical, even approaching theological concepts at times. As such, much of his thoughts and opinions on the subject veer far from the standard types of replies you have heard and read from his peers in the IFBB. Here are 10 pearls of training wisdom direct from The Predator, for you to contemplate and integrate into your own workouts. 

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1. There Are No ‘Best Exercises’

 I confess that in my many conversations with Kai for MD, I would often get frustrated at his habit of rarely answering the question I had asked, exactly. In time, I grew to understand that this was more an indication that the question itself, rather than his answer, was faulty. So it was when we spoke for an arm-training article nearly a decade ago. Looking for something that could be neatly packaged into a sidebar, I asked Kai to list what he felt were the most productive exercises for biceps and triceps. I got no such list. “Who’s to say that one exercise is more valuable or productive than any other?” he asked back. “Every single exercise we do as bodybuilders plays its own part in our development, and it’s impossible to say over many thousands of workouts over the years which ones provided this or that particular result.” While we can still make valid arguments as to the greater relative value of say, a compound movement like a deadlift over an isolation exercise like a one-arm cable row, Kai feels that as bodybuilders, we are doing more than building slabs of muscle aimlessly. “If you think of your body as your masterpiece, then every single brush stroke on that canvas matters,” he said. In other words, never write off any exercise as worthless, and never assign all-powerful prominence to any, either.

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2. Weak Body Parts – Don’t Accept Defeat!

 We all have weaker body parts that don’t respond as well as others. And it would be ludicrous to state that individual genetic limitations aren’t the root cause of these imbalances in our physiques. One man can train his chest like a beast that’s possessed and have little to show for it, while another might train his with half the effort and intensity and have pecs that are three times thicker and fuller. Genetics are real. At the same time, it’s also true that if you never even try to succeed at something, you are guaranteed to fail. Such was the case with Kai’s calves. Back when he was a teenager, a female personal trainer took him through a full workout. “When it was over,” Kai tells us, “I asked her, what about calves? Aren’t we going to do anything for calves? To which she replied, no, because you’re African-American. You can’t get big calves anyway.” Kai could have easily accepted that as fact, and ignored his calves. Instead, he took that remark as a personal challenge and set about training his calves with a passion. By the time he was an IFBB pro, Kai’s calves were good enough to match his enormous quads and hams. “Thinking of a body part as weak, and deciding that any efforts applied to it will be in vain, is a defeatist attitude that will never yield any results,” Kai said. “Instead, see that muscle group as a challenge that you will overcome. Believe you can produce positive results, and you will.”

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3. Rules Are Meant to Be Broken

 It should come as no surprise that Kai doesn’t concern himself with conforming to any established rules regarding training. He has built his physique by following his instincts and doing what feels right to him, even when it flies in the face of what the experts recommend and even what his fellow pros do. You can’t do an hour on the StepMill before you train legs— you’ll exhaust them and they will atrophy! Kai has done it. Do his legs look emaciated? You aren’t supposed to train for more than 90 minutes total, either. Some of Kai’s workouts, especially for legs, have stretched past the three-hour mark. He does things like warming up with pull-ups no matter which body part he’s working that day, and his reps are all over the place. It’s not even possible to list a “typical” workout for any given body part that Kai follows. Yet the proof, they say, is in the pudding. Kai Greene has a physique that some have felt deserved to be called the best in the world on more than one occasion, and he didn’t craft it by adhering to set rules. There is a lesson to be learned there. If you feel something is right, it feels right and it works for you, then it doesn’t matter a whit if it’s accepted as “correct” or not.

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4. The Weight Doesn’t Matter

 Kai is one of the strongest bodybuilders around. There has been video shot of him bench-pressing 500 pounds for reps just a few weeks out from the Mr. Olympia. He has squatted as much as 800 pounds in his younger years, and regularly squatted 600 for sets of 10-12. Yet he has never lifted heavy, purely for the sake of lifting heavy. Unless he is able to use a full range of motion, get a full contraction and feel the target muscle working every inch of the way, he never hesitates to go lighter. Take dumbbell rows, for instance. Surely he is capable of working in the 150-200-pound range, yet he rarely goes over a 120. “Lee Haney was famous for saying he never used more than a 70- or an 80-pound dumbbell for rows,” Kai reminds us, “but he made it a point to say that he went all the way up for a full contraction. And his back was incredible, the best in the world at that time.” Greene subscribes to the same philosophy, though it’s something that has come over the course of time. “In my younger years, I was all about moving big, big weights and wasn’t so concerned with things like the quality of contraction. That has definitely changed.” This is what most of us who have been in the game see as the biggest hindrance when bodybuilders fail to make gains. They insist on using weights that are so heavy that they can’t use proper form and definitely aren’t feeling the target muscle engaging. If Kai can leave his ego at the door, so can you!

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5. Never Ignore Basic Free-weight Movements

 While there may not be any set-in-stone “rules” about training, there are some truisms that have been proven over the course of decades, by literally millions of men who have lifted weights with the goals of becoming bigger and stronger. For most of the time men have been engaging in resistance training, free weights were the only tools available. Machines came into prominence in the 1970s, mainly due to the phenomenal success of the Nautilus line, and now there are actually more machines than there are free weights in the many thousands of gyms, health clubs and fitness centers all over the USA. Kai trains at places like Bev and Steve’s Powerhouse Gym, which features an incredible collection of quality machines along with free weights. Still, he never relies on those high-tech machines in his quest to build the best physique in the world. “Most of my life, I have had access only to the most basic equipment, barbells and dumbbells and some cables,” he relates. “But I learned how to make the most out of whatever I had, and I really feel it was a blessing in disguise. There are plenty of nice machines out there, but after having finally tried a lot of them, I realized that I wasn’t missing out on anything. Free weights are still the most valuable tool for any bodybuilder. You can get a great physique by using all free weights and no machines, but I seriously question whether the opposite would be true. Instinct tells me it wouldn’t.”

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Those are the first five of the top 10 training fundamentals to be learned from Kai Greene, a thinking man’s bodybuilder if there ever was one. Ponder them, take what you find useful, and put it into practice to better hone your own masterpiece of muscle. 

 

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