Dennis Wolf Q&A - Covering Squats, Weight Belts & Diets on a Budget
Dennis Wolf Q&A - Covering Squats, Weight Belts & Diets On A Budget
Squats Needed for Big Legs?
Can big legs be built without squatting? My knees just give me too much trouble to go deep enough to actually work my quads. Any hints or tips would be appreciated greatly. Also, do you train legs more than once a week? I train quads on one day and hams on another. Since my results are not what I want, should I go heavy with low reps one day? And high reps with lighter weight on another? Thanks for all your help— it is appreciated!
You do hear all the time about how you can’t get great legs without squatting. I don’t believe this is true. Look at Dorian Yates. He had some major injury in his hip before he even turned pro and never did barbell squats again after that. But Dorian worked very hard on leg presses, hack squats and Smith machine squats and built legs good enough to be Mr. Olympia for six years in a row! It’s all about training heavy and with intensity. Do you really think that if you do that, your legs won’t grow just because you didn’t squat? That doesn’t make sense. I don’t ever train legs more than once a week. I work them once a week. In the off-season I do quads and hams together, but for my contest training I break them up into two different workouts. If you are working the legs as hard as you should be, they would need at least five days to recover. But still, you should mix up your rep ranges. Don’t only do higher or lower reps. Either do lower reps one workout and higher the next time, or use a good blend of rep ranges in the same workout.
Do I Need a Weight Belt?
What’s your opinion about using weight belts? Some people say you should only use them on your heaviest sets or for certain exercises like squats, overhead presses and deadlifts. Others say you should wear them all the time, and then a lot of people say you should NEVER wear a belt! What do you think?
I can tell you this. If you never wear a belt, you will get used to training without one and you really won’t ever need one. If you always wear a belt, you will get used to training with one and you will always need to wear it! In the off-season, I really only wear a belt when I do squats and also barbell rows. I don’t like to wear a belt all the time because I find it makes it uncomfortable to breathe if I make it tight. And if it’s not tight, what’s the point of wearing it? For the last four weeks before a show, I do wear a belt throughout the whole workout at all my workouts. I don’t do this because I feel like I need the support or to avoid injury. I do it just because it reminds me to keep my stomach sucked in up onstage the whole time. Part of my strength when I compete is my wide shoulders and back and my small waist. But if I let my stomach relax, it doesn’t look as good. This is what I do. You may feel better using a belt all the time, or never.
Bodybuilding Diet on a Budget
Dennis, now that you are making some decent money in the sport, you probably eat plenty of high-quality protein like steak and chicken breasts. When you were an amateur back in Germany, were you able to eat like that, or did you have to go with cheaper protein sources?
In my early years, I definitely didn’t have a lot of money to spend on good food like I do now. I relied a lot more on dairy products like cottage cheese, yogurt and quark, a type of soft, fresh fat-free cheese that’s more popular in Europe than it is in the USA. It looks and tastes a lot like sour cream. It’s only got 12 grams of protein in a 100-gram serving, but it’s cheap and very easy to eat it fast. I would also eat chicken, eggs and turkey, but steak was out of the question then. Carbs like oatmeal, rice and potatoes are always pretty cheap. It’s the meat, especially higher quality meat, that we bodybuilders spend the most money on. Still, I managed to make very good gains in those early years without a lot of meat in my diet. The key is getting enough protein, not necessarily if it’s the best quality. Ideally we would all eat steak and chicken breasts every day, but that’s not realistic if you don’t have much money.
Massage Does a Body Good
It seems like most top-level pro bodybuilders get regular chiropractic adjustments and deep-tissue massages. How helpful do you find them? I am not a rich guy by any means, but I could get them a couple of times a month if you tell me they would really make a difference in my training, recovery and growth.
Deep-tissue massage isn’t cheap, and you usually have to pay for it all out of pocket because very few health insurance plans cover it. But to me, it’s definitely worth it. When you train hard and damage the muscle enough to make it grow, it also gets stuck together and forms “adhesions.” If those aren’t broken up, you can’t grow the way you should and if you compete, you’ll also never see the level of muscle separation that you should. I have it done every week when I’m training for a contest, and every other week in the off-season. As for chiropractic, I don’t do that. I’ve had it done, but I’m always afraid something might go wrong when they are adjusting and popping all those bones around! I just don’t trust that it’s safe. But also, I definitely feel a difference when I get deep-tissue work done and with chiropractic, I didn’t. That’s my experience and my opinion, so please if any of you are chiropractors don’t write me an angry e-mails!