Gaffes for growth: two-time Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler does everything wrong when training chest and biceps-and still gets incredible results. You can learn from his so-called mistakes

Flex, Oct, 2008 by Julian Schmidt

Jay Cutler doesn't speak in anatomy-chart terms of isolated individual muscle fibers, or of a repetition performed with mechanical precision that preempts passion, or of doctrinaire obedience to the latest laws of exact execution. He long ago realized that common sense, or instinct, was more reliable than pseudoscience. Consequently, he has broken just about every bodybuilding law on the books. And consequently, Jay Cutler is Mr. Olympia, twice over.

From his seminal days to now, his infractions have run roughshod over the most popular training conventions of the day, and he indiscriminately inflicts them on every muscle group. Take, for example, chest and biceps. Here, he explains his violations of common bodybuilding truisms, and how they've added up to his ultraproductive workouts of today.

CHEST: THEN AND NOW

1 NO BENCHING. When Cutler was 18, he always started his workouts with incline dumbbell presses, avoiding the hallowed flat bench presses, having perspicuously discerned their potential for tearing a pectoral muscle.

2 TRAINING OVERKILL. He also eschewed the learning-curve approach to bodybuilding. "When I started training, I did virtually every exercise I could for chest," Cutler recalls. "I focused on incline and decline movements with dumbbells and barbells, flye movements, you name it--probably 25 sets for chest, alone, which means I probably overdid it." His repetitions--in the range of eight to 12--were also very heavy, very explosive, and full-range. He describes the movement during pec exercises then as burying the weight in his chest and locking it out at the top.

CUTLER'S OFFSEASON TRAINING SPLIT

SUNDAY       Chest, biceps, forearms and upper back (pulldowns, pullups)

MONDAY       Quads

TUESDAY      Rest

WEDNESDAY    Shoulders, traps and triceps

THURSDAY     Back (rows, deadlifts)

FRIDAY       Hamstring and calves

SATURDAY     Rest

3 LEAVE YOUR EGO AT THE GYM DOOR. Beginners are usually encouraged to affect invincibility--the "I can do anything" attitude--which, they are told, is the expedient for getting stronger and bigger, but Cutler assures us he was never an ego lifter. "I always focused on contractions," he says. "It just seems that it took me years to build a really full chest." His shoulders were always the stronger body-part, preempting his chest from pressing movements. "I have a very wide structure," he notes, "so there's lots to fill in there." A gut response might suggest that

4 PATIENCE PAYS. Normal maturation of workouts progresses from simple, for beginners, to complex, for pros, but Cutler inverted that process and admits, "It took me 10 years, from 18 to 28, to build a really full and thick chest. Along the way, I did so many chest movements--including pullovers and stretching to try and expand the chest--that I finally reached the point where I got better results from a simpler program. The message is: be patient."

CUTLER'S CHEST & BICEPS WORKOUT

EXERCISE                                 SETS  REPS

                           CHEST

Incline hammer presses                    2 *  12-15

                                          4    10-12

Flat-bench dumbbell presses               1 *  12-15

                                          3    10-12

Bodyweight dips                           3    10-12

Decline barbell presses                   3     10

                           BICEPS

Standing barbell curls                    2 *  12-15

                                          3    12-15

Dumbbell curls                           3-4   12-15

Preacher curls (or concentration curls)   3    12-15

* Warm-up set(s)

Accrued muscle mass pushed him to that point, as well as to other major changes in frequency, volume and execution. "In the early days," he says, "I trained each muscle group every five days. Now it's once every seven days. I switched, because I felt I was overtraining for the amount of muscle I had accumulated. That proved correct--I found that it was easier to retain my muscle mass by going into the gym, hitting my chest with a few quick shock sets, and then leaving."

Describing his chest workouts, Cutler intones, "They're the same every week. I start with incline hammer presses for four sets, then flat dumbbell presses for three sets, bodyweight dips for three sets and, finally, decline barbell presses for three sets. That's all I do. Every chest workout is the same exercises, in the same order, for the same number of sets, with the same repetition range--about 10."

5 FULL-RANGE MOTIONS ARE NOT ALWAYS IDEAL. Though his execution of reps has also changed over time, the differences are subtle. And he has not abandoned his principle of explosion, only modulated it to accommodate his new, truncated range of motion. "In the past I'd go down to eight reps and explode a lot, especially on the upward motion--come down tight, then explode upward," he explains. "But with time, and with the amount of training I've done and with the size I've gained, I've learned to shorten the rep range, to keep the shoulders and triceps out of the movement as much as possible. My range of motion is only about the middle two-thirds of the full range, and I'm more controlled--very controlled. This also helps reduce risk of injury."