Uberchest: with lessons learned after a disappointing showing at the 2005 Mr. Olympia, gigantic German Markus Ruhl has returned to his mass-building roots in the gym

Flex, July, 2006 by Markus Ruhl

I tried and failed. When I turned pro, many of the top guys said I was too big and not aesthetic enough, that I should stop lifting so heavy and use a more "mature" approach to training, that it was as much art as sport, and that I should "paint" my physique with perfect muscularity, rather than try to blast it out of a granite mountainside.

Bodybuilding, they said, had changed, and the new aesthetic standard confirms it.

Who was I to argue? I certainly was not a paragon of their version of mature bodybuilding. I was in it because I loved to train hard and heavy, because I took it as a compliment when people called me "the German Beast," and because I loved the pounding brool of "R-u-u-uhl!!!" that shuddered through the audience when I took the stage. Still, I gave maturity a try. I did more reps, I did fewer sets, I became more sensitive and I even domesticated myself: I got married, built a house with a garden and bought a gym. I matured. In fact, I matured myself right out of the top 10 at last year's Mr. Olympia.

Now, I'm back, wiser, and I'll never go through that again. I still have my wife, Simone, my house with its garden, my gym and my dog, Lady, but those changes to my training were a bitter lesson. They taught me that big muscles need big training. Lighter weights reduced my waist, but they also reduced my passion, my fight, my love for bodybuilding--and my muscles. They tamed the German Beast.

The new R-u-u-uhl is now the old R-u-u-uhl and in just the last six months, my improvement, particularly in my chest, is more obvious than at any other time in my career. Some of my sudden pectoral growth might have resulted from giving myself a break from heavy training in 2005--it works for Ronnie Coleman--but I'd have to say that most of it is a result of my return to old-style training, which means a lot of sets for the anchor exercise, crushing weight and the cruelest reps in bodybuilding.

I picked up right where I left off before I became touchy-feely. When I was at my best, I employed several incline exercises to add mass to my upper pecs and to the borders of my chest. I wanted them to bulge out with more prominent cliffs around the edges, so that my chest could stand alone as an attention-getter and not have to battle my shoulders to be noticed.

Inclines worked then and they're working now; they haven't compromised my chest mass gains one iota. Everything is the same as if the exercises were flat: weight, reps, sets, concentration and range of motion. The only difference is that inclines hit more of my outer and upper pecs, as intended. With a flat press, more responsibility is placed on the front delts, lats and triceps than on the pecs. Bodybuilders with a huge chest and lagging delts should continue to do all of their chest exercises flat, but that doesn't apply to me. I'm now applying some of that "maturity" I learned, by using inclines to build the best chest in the sport.

* Incline barbell presses My chest workouts always begin with a barbell, as any mass-building workout should; after that, the order of exercises is up for grabs. First, though, I want to spread maximum stress over the entire chest complex and fatigue all of its muscle fibers in a compound manner. That can only be accomplished with a barbell.

I lower the bar smoothly, tightening as I go, and press my chest upward to meet it as I contract my lats together under my back. This spreads my pecs to their max. As I press, I squeeze my pec muscles as hard as I can, trying to use their strength to push the bar to the top.

Since this is the basic exercise in my chest workout, I give it six to eight sets. Since it's a full-power movement, the first set is a warm-up of 25 reps. From there, I pyramid in big weight jumps, ending with as few as three reps, to failure, for my last set.

* Incline dumbbell presses I know the name of this exercise indicates a press, but when I do it, my reps more closely approximate flyes in that I lower the dumbbells outward through an arc in order to stretch my pecs and place more stress on them over a greater range of motion.

Concentration and control are crucial here. I like to use very heavy dumbbells, but doing so on an incline puts greater stresses on the pec muscles, so I have to keep the movement tight on the way down and carefully and gradually apply power during the upstroke. These get four sets, and since I'm warmed up from the incline barbell presses, all are to failure, starting with about 10 reps for the first set and ending with six to eight reps for the last set.

* Incline dumbbell supination flyes No one has ever complained about my center chest mass, so I use this exercise to round out the edges and the strap of muscle at the bottom that supports the whole works. At the bottom of the movement, my hands are pronated (palms facing downward). As I bring the flye movement upward, I twist the dumbbells inward, so that my palms face each other at the top. This directs the stress from the outside of my pecs inward, activating my lower pecs, so that they lift my entire chest complex upward and inward. Try it empty-handed--extend your arms in the flye position but with your palms down, then twist your hands as you bring your arms up; you'll feel how the flexion travels.