Written by Chris Cormier
30 October 2006

I've been trying to get more serious about my nutrition lately, because I know one of the reasons I never achieved the results I could have is that I don't eat enough. Recently, I bumped up my meals so I get in at least three solid meals and three shakes or bars. But I have to say, what a pain in the ass it is eating so often! You basically have to plan everything you do around your meals and bring food with you constantly. How do you deal with this? Is it an annoyance to you, too, or am I just bitching and moaning here?

            You may find it comforting to hear that there are times when I also find it annoying to have to live my whole life around meals. That's usually only right after a contest, when I'm trying to enjoy something like a normal life for a little while before it's time to start gearing up for another show. But it all depends on your state of mind. Once I start training for a show and getting really into the diet, it actually feels good to have all my food around me when I need it. To me, that gives me confidence. I know I'm doing my homework and getting all the right nutrients in at the proper times, which some of my competitors might be slacking on. 

You hear all the time about how critical your diet is, but until you compete at the highest levels of bodybuilding, you can't really appreciate just how true that is. Pretty much everyone trains hard with the weights, some harder than others, of course. But the real key is who is doing their cardio and nailing their diet. I assume you aren't worried about getting lean now; you're more concerned with putting on muscle. In that case, I suggest you stop thinking of your meals as a "pain in the ass" and instead think of them as opportunities to grow.

Everything you eat is important in the muscle-building process.  Assuming you're hitting it hard and heavy in the gym, every waking hour outside the gym should be geared toward maintaining an anabolic environment. Otherwise, busting your ass in the gym is for nothing. You need to have enough protein and carbs to support the hard training, and more important, you have to keep a steady stream of nutrients coming in to support muscle repair and growth. Look, you're the one who wants to get bigger and stronger, right?  Nobody is forcing you. You should consider it a privilege to have the health to be able to train hard and develop a muscular physique. Along with that privilege comes the responsibility of doing all the right things to make sure those workouts of yours produce results.

Yeah, you may have to carry a cooler and a jug of water around so every single meal you will need is right there. It's easy to look around at average people who don't really even think about eating until they're starving, and be envious of that carefree existence. But all you need to do is look at their average bodies to turn that around. Do you want to look like they do? Of course not! So you have to do the things the average person can't or won't do. You're already working out hard on a regular basis, but that's only half the battle. You also need to put the same effort into your nutrition and supplementation if you want to see the best possible results. You should at least be grateful that you have shakes and bars these days to make things so much more convenient.

When I was in my growing years, I had to take a cooler packed with chicken and rice everywhere I went. I worked for a long time as a bouncer at a club in LA called the Roxbury (no, I never saw those two crazy guys from the movie there, but I will get into another celebrity encounter in a few minutes).  The manager didn't want to give me all the breaks I needed for meals, so I was always having to sneak my chicken and rice in on the down-low, eating as fast as I could and hoping he didn't notice I was gone. You want to talk about a pain in the ass? So, I hope you see it's all how you look at things. Just change your perspective and your attitude about eating will change right away, too. 

 

What do you think about doing heavy partials? A big dude at my gym does them and I'm thinking about trying them. For instance, he'll do all his regular sets of incline barbell presses, going up to about 315. This is inside a power rack. Then he moves the pins higher so he can only lower the bar about a third of the way down, loads 405 on the bar and does a couple of sets of six to eight reps just in that top range. Have you ever tried heavy partials, and do you think they are a good idea?

            Yes, I have tried them, and they do seem like a nice shock to the muscles. I have never done them consistently, though. When I looked at the possible risks versus the possible benefits, I decided the scale was tipping too far over toward the risk side. I think heavy partials put too much strain on your tendons and could very well lead to a muscle tear. The way the guy at your gym is doing them is probably the safest way. At least he does all his regular full range-of-motion (ROM) sets first, which fatigues the muscle pretty well, then he does the partial ROM sets.       

Unfortunately, I have seen a lot of guys who start out with the heavy partials, lots of times because they read somewhere how great they are. This is an extremely dangerous practice. If you can bench press 315 for eight reps, you can probably do 405 for five or six partial reps. You may think that's great because your chest is handling a lot more weight and it should grow, right?  Maybe so, but you always have to keep the connective tissues in mind. A phrase I like to remember is "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link."  While your chest may be strong enough to support 405 pounds in the top ROM near lockout, the tendons that connect your chest to the shoulder joint may not be. The result can be a complete tear of the pectoral muscle off the joint, a horrible injury I'm sorry to say I have witnessed several times over the years at Gold's. 

My advice to you is to forget about partial ROM repetitions and concentrate on working the muscle through a full range of motion and getting good contractions and pumps. This is the most effective way to stimulate growth and I don't care what some egghead scientists may say otherwise.  They sit there with a computer simulation program and do some calculations, then announce that they've discovered the best way to train for muscle growth.  They might even go ahead and do a little study that proves it, using a few untrained college kids who would grow from tying their shoelaces.

 The gym is my lab and I would put my 25 years of training and observations up against any single study. I have watched dozens of bodybuilders try heavy partials over the years and I can't say any of them blew up and grew at some crazy accelerated rate. I can tell you that I saw more than a few of them get hurt. Unless you want to join the ranks of the walking wounded who go around telling everyone how big and strong they used to be before they tore this muscle or wrecked that joint, don't go pushing your luck with heavy partials.

 

A very big part of why I started bodybuilding was to get girls. Now I'm 22, 5-9 and go about 240 pounds pretty lean in the off-season. I won the Novice Overall at a big regional show here last year. But I don't get a lot of girls, at least not as many as I thought I would once I got to be this size. When me and my best friend Jason go out clubbing, he hooks up every single time while I average about one in every three or four times. Jason is a skinny-ass kid, but he makes six figures selling BMWs and drives a new BMW 745, while I work as a personal trainer and drive a '94 Honda Civic with a big dent in the driver-side door. So, now I'm starting to think girls don't even care what a guy is built like, as long as he's got bank to spend on them.    Agree or disagree?

            I think if you had a great physique and a ton of money to spend, you'd never have to worry about female companionship again! Let's be real here for a minute. An expensive car does attract a lot of beautiful women. A lot of very attractive women have been brought up to believe their ultimate goal in life should be to find a rich man to shower them with money and gifts so they never have to work a day in their lives. It sounds cold to a guy like you who doesn't have a lot of material things to offer a woman, but this is nothing new. It's been going on for thousands of years.

I guess things are finally starting to change as women have been starting to take care of themselves instead of relying on men to do it for them, but you are still going to encounter many women who just want to spend a man's money. But before you let that get you down, ask yourself: Do you really want to be with a woman who sees you as a walking dollar sign? A woman like that will only hang around as long as you give her plenty of cash and jewelry.  Once things start to get rough and you can't afford her high-maintenance ass, she's off like the Flash to the next sucker. 

Take it from me, I've met more than a few of these gold-digging honeys over the years and they are in it 100 percent for the money. So, you don't have a Ferrari. Big deal. Your body is your Ferrari. See, a rich man can buy a $400,000 sports car, but he can't buy a physique like you have. Only years of hard work in the gym can do that. And since you seemed so fixated on cars, let's keep that analogy going. When you're walking around a club, or when you're getting down in the bedroom, are you in your car? No. Your car doesn't matter. 

Seriously, some guy with a weak, flabby body can't compare with a muscular stallion. His ride out in the garage may be high-class, but his body is a sack of crap no woman would enjoy "riding." Maybe you need to start going to different clubs because there are plenty of women out there who appreciate a strong, hard body on a man. I can tell you that strippers, who have to be about the most money-hungry women out there in the world, love it when they get a chance to do a lap dance for a bodybuilder and feel all up on his muscles (or so I have been told!). 

But before you get too comfortable with that, let me ask you another question. Do you really want to be with a woman who only wants you for your body? Since you're talking about hooking up like it's a numbers game, something tells me you're fine with that. Clubs are good spots to meet girls who want to get with a bodybuilder, but you should also check out a few gyms and health clubs in your area. A lot of times a woman who spends a lot of time working on her body is looking for a man who does the same. So, let your buddy, Jason, keep pulling all the gold diggers he can find to blow his money on. You need to get out there and find the women who will appreciate the top-notch body you have built. 

 

I train back on Mondays and shoulders on Tuesdays, so I was wondering what I should do with traps. If I hit them with back, will that mess me up for shoulders the next day? If I hit them with shoulders, wouldn't they be tired from rows and deadlifts the day before? Please give me your opinion. You have some sick traps and I would love for mine to look like that someday. Right now, you can barely see mine from the front. I think if I wasn't overtraining them they might finally start growing. At least I hope so.

            I do traps with shoulders, because to me, back day is mostly about the lats. I tend to feel the traps working a little bit in a lot of shoulder exercises like lateral raises, overhead presses and upright rows. And when I do heavy shrugs for traps, my shoulders always get a little pumped, too. So, for me, those two muscle groups just naturally go together. But the traps do also get worked indirectly in a lot of back exercises, especially if you're doing heavy deadlifts and barbell rows. I think you need to change your split so your back and shoulders aren't back to back like that on consecutive days. You didn't give me your full split, but here is a suggestion for how you can switch it up and keep those two areas apart:

Monday:                     back

Tuesday:                    chest and triceps

Thursday:                  shoulders, traps, biceps

Friday:                        legs

Or, if you want to break up the body over five days, try this:

Day one:                    back

Day two:                     chest

Day three:                  legs

Day four:                    OFF

Day five:                    shoulders and traps

Day six:                      biceps and triceps

Day seven:                OFF

            Either of those splits would give the traps several days to recover before they were worked again, either directly or indirectly. And while we're talking, let me give you a good routine to try for traps:

dumbbell shrugs                                          3 sets of 8-15 reps

superset with

narrow-grip EZ-curl upright rows              3 sets of 8-15 reps

behind-back barbell shrugs                       4 sets of 8-12 reps

            That should be just what you need to get those suckers climbing up toward your ears.

 

            Is it okay to eat right before bed? I'm trying to put some size on now, but I don't want to get fat. If I should eat before bed, what would be a couple of good meal options?

            I do believe you should eat before going to bed, otherwise your body will run out of the essential building blocks it needs to remain in a positive nitrogen balance and you can actually start losing muscle while you sleep. If you want the convenience of a shake and don't really like to eat that late, you can try MuscleTech's new product Nitro-Tech Nighttime. It's a time-released protein formula with both faster-digesting whey and slower-digesting casein so your muscles have a steady stream of amino acids all night long. 

            Or, if you want to eat a solid meal, your best bet is to have a protein source with a good amount of fat in it so it digests very slowly. A couple of options here would be steak, or an omelet with some whole eggs and cheese.  You could even throw in a couple of turkey sausages. Digestion slows down when you're asleep anyway, but these types of meals will take a good four to six hours to break down, which is exactly what a bodybuilder wants as protection against slipping into that nasty catabolic state.

 You never want to have carbs with that last meal of the day, unless you are a hardgainer type with a lightning-fast metabolism who will burn it up. Most people will get fat pretty quick if they have carbs late at night and then just go to sleep.

 

Training and Lifestyle Journal

December, 2004

 

            At last, I have a video!

            By the time you read this, my video "Real Deal - Destination Olympia 2004" will be available through my website, http://www.chriscormier.com/, as well as in Max Muscle and Musclemag retail stores. I honestly think my video offers the truest cross-section of a pro bodybuilder's life ever shown. I even threw in footage from when I won the 1993 USA to see where my IFBB career started.  You will see me at the MuscleTech booth interacting with fans, so some of you may be in this thing. I'm a people person and never shy away from fans, as you will see.

            Watch me roll up to Gold's Venice in my black Escalade with the 24-inch rims for my final workouts leading up to the Olympia. There are cameos inside the gym with other pros like Mike Morris, who helps push me through a heavy leg workout, and Tommi "Glutezilla" Thorvildsen. One of my youngest fans is an eight-year-old girl whose mom brings her by Gold's every couple of weeks to see me. She's always asking me to flex my biceps for her, and she's the cutest little doll you ever met.

            You can also see such varied happenings as shopping at the Louis Vitton store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, and shooting photos with the one and only Per Bernal for MD. You will be hearing a lot about this video, because it's something totally different and original.

 

            Monday Night Football with Ronnie

Ronnie Coleman scored some tickets to Monday Night Football when the Cowboys played the Eagles and asked if I wanted to come down to Dallas and check it out. Being a huge football fan, especially of the Cowboys, it took me about half a second to say yes. So, I took my little boy Kiviok out to Dallas.  We were both dressed head to toe in Cowboys gear and he was so excited. 

We got some food before the game at this awesome seafood restaurant named Pompano's, where Ronnie was supposed to pick us up and we would ride to the game together. We were done eating and Ronnie still hadn't showed, so I called his cell to see what was up. He said he was on the way, and said that again when I called about 20 minutes later. Finally, it had been about 90 minutes that me and my son had been waiting, and the game was gonna be starting pretty soon. I called Ronnie one last time and he said he was sorry, but he was running really late and I should probably just take a cab.  That's what I did, and I actually got to the game before Ronnie. 

            Our seats were actually on opposite sides of the stadium, but I spotted his big ass pretty easily. Ronnie was weighing about 310, with this jersey that had to be a 6-XL- and it was still tight around his arms! I waved and he waved back. Every once in a while I would see him get out of his seat and lumber up to get a drink or use the restroom. Even from that far away, it looked like there were two puppies wrestling under his jersey whenever he moved. 

            We met up once the game was over- Philadelphia trounced Dallas.  We bought a bunch of stuff from the Cowboys store and then piled into his big yellow Hummer H-1. I tell you, I have never been carsick in my life, but riding back to his house in that military vehicle I felt like hurling. You feel every bump in the road, plus that big engine has the whole truck vibrating like crazy. Back at his house his mom had made us all dinner and Ronnie gave me a copy of his new training book Hardcore. All in all it was a great little trip.

 

Another Run-In with Iron Mike Tyson

            Some of you might remember an incident that happened over 10 years ago when I was working as a bouncer at an LA nightclub called the Roxbury.  Mike Tyson, who at the time was heavyweight boxing champion of the world, came up behind me and flicked the back of my head with his finger, looking for a fight. His boys pulled him away, which was lucky for him. I would never try to duke it out with him, but I was a standout wrestler in high school and college. I would have just taken him down on the ground and out-muscled the smaller man.

Just last night I was using the urinal in the restroom of a club in LA and guess who was right next to me? Yup, it was Iron Mike. He either didn't recognize me (way back I think I caught his attention just because I looked like Evander Holyfield), or he was hoping I didn't recognize him- like that's possible with that big tribal tattoo on his face. One thing I think the public should know is that Mike (or Don King, maybe) claimed all those years that he's 5-foot-10. He must have shrunk, because I'm 5-foot-11 and my jaw was on the same level as his shoulder. Tyson is maybe 5-foot-8 at most. I have no doubt I could take him now if it came down to it.

Poor Mike has lost a lot of muscle and he looks a lot older than whatever he really is, around 37, I think. You can see all this scar tissue on his eyelids; they are almost swollen shut. He's just been beaten to a pulp too many times.  And even though I heard he had money problems, Mike still had an entourage of about 30 people with him. Oh well, that's one way to blow all those millions he made.

 

            Best Presentation Award at the Olympia

            I know the Olympia is history now, but there was one thing I wanted to comment on and that's the Best Presentation Award Shawn Ray gave to Darrem Charles. The first time I saw his routine with the moonwalking and the popping and locking, I thought it was pretty entertaining. But now, I think I have seen him do almost exactly the same routine 40 or 50 times! Seriously, he just changes the music a little bit once in a while. I never claimed to be the best poser in the sport, but at least I do different routines and switch up the poses from show to show. 

And the moonwalk- how played out is that after all these years? To me, the best poser was somebody like Vince Taylor. Vince came out with that Terminator routine in 1991 and he rocked the house with that shit. Ever since then, he's been imitated by everyone from fellow top pros to amateurs at local shows. And not one of the imitators has done the Terminator thing like Vince.  Messing with that is like building another Acropolis and changing up the pillars and the shape of the roof. On that note, Vince did that routine for years, but he kept changing it and adding to it. That dude was a master performer. 

 

            Chingy Stole My Sh*t!

            I noticed that the rapper Chingy does my double-C hand sign, with the wrists crossed, at the end of his videos. I should have patented that when I came up with it a few years ago and explained it in Flex magazine. Oh well, too late now. But I ain't hatin' on Chingy; it seems like he goes through a lot of the same struggles I do with other rappers not giving him his proper respect and talking a lot of trash about him. So it's cool, Chingy, just recognize where you got that from- The Real Deal!

            Time to Win the Arnold Classic at Last

            I'm just starting to prepare for the Arnold Classic. I don't waste my time on Internet message boards, but it's come to my attention that a lot of people out there have been writing about how I need to get over being screwed at the 2004 Arnold, I need to move on and stop being such a crybaby. Let me respond to that mess right here in MD where it's in print.

To all of you idiots who call me lazy, who say I whine and complain too much, you need to shut the hell up. You don't know how I feel. You have no idea what it's like to be second place for five years in a row at the same contest you have been third at on three other occasions and fourth twice. There is no way you can possibly comprehend the level of frustration I feel after all those years.  Losing last time almost felt to me like the days of slavery or something, like, this is what we're giving you boy, so you better take it. I'm just being honest and trying to explain what goes through your head at times like those. I have the right to express my emotions, as long as I'm not blaming anyone or making it out to be a conspiracy against me, which I'm not. If it ever came across that way, it wasn't meant to.

            But believe it or not, I'm moving on and putting all the pain and frustration behind me now. There is a gleam in my eye and a burning spirit in my heart to win the Arnold in 2005. It's time for me to put up or shut up. I feel like I am the uncrowned Arnold Classic champ and it's time I took the throne, finally. I want this to be my ultimate physique package, bigger and harder than ever before. I know it won't be a problem because I looked in the mirror today and I never got too out of shape from the Olympia and Grand Prix shows a few weeks ago. My quads and hams are still cleanly separated and my back is pretty lean all the way from the traps to the lumbars. 

            A few of the issues in my personal life that have been the source of a lot of stress have finally subsided. And in addition to working with MD's own Chad Nicholls again, I will also have MD's Pro Creator, Hany Rambod, acting as a "third eye." Hany will come down to LA every couple of weeks and take a look at me, which will supplement the photos I e-mail to Chad. Between those two guys, I don't think I can fail in hitting my best-ever condition. 2005 will be my eleventh season as a pro and I want it to go down as my greatest. Stay tuned.

 

            Real Deal tank tops are for sale. These are the old-school white wife-beaters with the logo in black, suitable for the gym, the club, or anywhere you want to wear them. If you want to pick one up, send a check or money order for $15 to: Chris Cormier, 1801 Lincoln Blvd. # 120, Venice, CA 90291

Be sure to specify your size. We have small for women, and for you guys, there's small, large, XL and 2XL for you big boys. Wear it with pride!

 

Got a question for Chris? E-mail it to him through the "Ask MD" page on http://www.musculardevelopment.com/.