Replay of the live chat with Phil Heath with tips on Flexonline- 20th April 2010

[spamy]

some useful infos there given the fact that he is under contract with flex

http://blog.flexonline.com/2010/04/l...l_heath_1.html

[the-craig]

I posted one of the last questions on there and the mods reworded it for no good reason.

[spamy]

and some older articles about Phil

Phil the heat

Flex, Nov, 2005 by Shawn Perine

PHIL HEATH, fresh off back-to-back wins at this year's Junior Nationals and the NPC USA and only weeks into his IFBB career, is already beginning to feel the heat of the blinding lights of bodybuilding stardom.

In an improbable two-and-a-half-year journey from bodybuilding neophyte to heralded pro, the Denver, Colorado, resident has already seen some of the best--and the worst--our sport has to offer, and he is ready for a whole lot more. Slammed by omnipresent Internet forum malcontents on everything from his appearance ("His clavicles aren't wide enough!") to his meteoric rise to stardom ("He's lying, gotta be training for, like, 15 years."), Heath bites his lip, cracks a smile, and moves onward and upward.

"Hey, it's all good," says the new Weider athlete. "Some people just want to tear you down no matter what. I just don't want to get caught up in all of their negativity. Let them say what they want about me. It's cool. I'll just let my physique do the talking the next time I'm onstage."

As to when specifically that is, Heath isn't saying. At least not at the moment. "Right now, all I'm thinking about is resting my body and growing. That way, when it's time to step onto a pro stage, I'll feel like I'm ready for the challenge," he states.

Even with online hecklers, don't think for one minute that Heath hasn't enjoyed his once-in-a-lifetime ride. "Three years ago, I hadn't even thought about being a bodybuilder. Four months ago, I was Mr. Colorado and getting ready for my first guest-posing appearance. Today, I'm 'Mr.' USA and an IFBB pro and a Weider athlete. It's all been so fast that it's still sinking in. But believe me, it's been an amazing experience so far, and I can't wait to see what the future holds for Phil 'The Heat' Heath." Neither can we.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Weider Publications
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group



Faster = big and stronger; Has Phil Heath discovered a previously unexplored secret to size? Compare his '07 Arnold Classic and '08 Ironman physiques and judge for yourself
Flex, July, 2008 by Shawn Perine

There's a new phrase in bodybuilding these days and all the cool kids are saying it. First uttered sometime earlier this year, "Heath up" is similar to "bulk up" in that it's about getting big, only without the kind of fat that bulking up implies. Its genesis is believed to be from the awe-inspiring change IFBB pro Phil Heath made to his physique in the 11-month span between the 2007 Arnold Classic and the '08 Ironman Pro.

A professional bodybuilder is considered pretty special if he can add five pounds of lean mass to his frame in the span of a year. Ten will put him in rarefied air. Fifteen? That's just nuts. But Heath added 16 pounds, to be exact, between March '07 and February '08.

How did he get from there to here in such a short span? What adjustments could he have made in such a relatively short time to amass so much mass? The bodybuilding world wants to know, and we have the answer.

NO GO O

March 2007--"Need more size," they said. "Can't compete against the big boys," they admonished. "Wait until next year." And he did.

In the hours after taking a disappointing fifth (but qualifying for the Olympia) at the 2007 Arnold Classic, Phil Heath, he of the meteoric rise to bodybuilding stardom, got introspective. After winning the first two showsof his pro career (the Shawn Ray Colorado Pro and the New York Pro contests of 2006) and being her-alded as his sport's second coming, the man known as The Gift was faced with a difficult decision: compete in the upcoming '07 edition of the Mr. O and quite possibly get his ass handed to him, or turn down a second consecutive invite to the show of shows.
It's hard enough for the typical pro bodybuilder to qualify for the Olympia even once during his career. To make it twice in your first two years in the IFBB is one of those things you write home to Mom about. Standing on the Olympia stage is every aspiring bodybuilder's dream, and turning your back on the chance to do so, twice, is almost unthinkable to anyone not named Phil Heath.

"It wasn't an easy decision by any means," confesses the 28-year-old. "Ever since I decided to become a bodybuilder I dreamed about getting on that Olympia stage. But I understood the reality. It wouldn't have done memuch good to be there just for the sake of being there; taking 15th and then having to work my way back up to a point where the judges respect me."

So he dedicated 2007 to adding quality mass to the 215 pounds he displayed in Columbus. That meant two things: working harder than he'd ever worked in his life, and working harder still.

Heath knew that the expectations he'd be laying on himself by opting out of the O again were an order of magnitude far greater than any he'd felt before. Come the '08 Arnold, he'd better show the fruits of some mighty grueling labor or plan on saying bye-bye to the bodybuilding biz.

No longer could he rely on his one-in-a-million gene set to give him an advantage over the competition. At the level at which he was now competing, every other man who stood onstage with him shared his innate propensity for developing muscle. From this moment on, Heath understood, it would take a whole lot of blood and sweat (real bodybuilders don't shed tears, of course) along with a new approach to training for him tocrack through the cement ceiling atop which stand body-building's elite.

But what approach? How could he retool his training enough that his already super-sized body could become even more super? Then he recalled a photo-shoot training session he participated in a year earlier, one that changed his perspective of what it meant to train hard.

GO, SPEED, GO!

"That back workout I did with Jay Cutler (see November 2006 FLEX) left an impression on me," Heath admits. As tough as it was, it was one of the best things to ever happen to my career. Up until that point, I thought I trained hard. But I learned a new meaning for the word that day.

"Jay likes to keep the intensity up through the entire workout. So it was time for me to step it up a notch. The eventual workout I followed is based on this idea and so far it's worked to a T."

There are four main ways in which a bodybuilder can increase the intensity of his workouts.

1. Increase weight By adding to the overall amount of weight lifted youadd stress to the muscles. This is effective but carries with it the downside of potential injury.

2. Increase workout volume Adding sets to each workout will increase the overall workload, as well as time spent in the gym. For short runs, this can lead to growth, but it's a recipe for fatigue in the long term.

3. Increase workout frequency This means less rest for weary muscles. Training seven days a week will lead to atrophy, fatigue and injury.

4. Decrease rest between sets This technique has the smallest downside. It forces the body to adapt more quickly to the stresses being placed upon it. A side benefit is increased fat burning and cardio response.

Heath opted for option four. "Jay trains at a really good pace," Philinforms. "He kept moving so quickly through the workout that I was actually getting winded trying to keep up with him, and I live at altitude [Denver, Colorado].

"So I started taking shorter rest periods between sets as a way of upping the intensity. Normally, you'd think this means dropping the weight down, which I did a little in the beginning. But I got to the point where I was handling the same poundages and even heavier than before, but resting far less.

"Of course, you always want to try to increase your weight when possible, but never at the expense of form or you'll end up injuring yourself. I found though that I was getting stronger all the time just by upping the intensity of my workouts by training faster. It was like strength was a side benefit to training at a quicker pace. In the end, I got a better pump during my work-outs, more soreness after them, and a bigger and better physique."

Despite the common assertion that heavy weights coupled with long (two to three minute) rest periods between sets, a la powerlifters, is the only route to getting massive, Weider Publications Science Editor Dr. Jim Stoppani explains that there are decided anabolic benefits to training a la Heath.

"When you cut down on rest time between sets, it changes the biochemistry within the muscle," Stoppani asserts. "Lactic acid is boosted, which signals the brain to release more growth hormone. Higher endogenous levels of growth hormones and insulinlike growth factor can be of benefit to just about any bodybuilder."

That explains how Heath could defy conventional training wisdom to add mass. Indeed, his 16-pound lean muscle increase over the course of a single year is nearly unprecedented in the annals of pro bodybuilding andwas duly noted as such by fans and fellow athletes alike in both Los Angeles, California, in February and in Columbus, Ohio, in March.

"I knew, standing up there [onstage at the Arnold Classic], that I had finally gotten to a point where Dexter [Jackson] didn't beat me in size," Heath says. "The year before, I knew it was close. But I knew all the hard work I put in over the past year had paid off when I was standing up there next to him and I felt like I had some good size on me."

[spamy]

PHIL'S "HEATH UP" ROUTINE

Phil Heath revamped his training routine from top to bottom in mid-2007.
The result? Sixteen pounds of superstriated, granite-hard muscle. Here
is the program that he followed to shock his body out of complacency
and into first place at the 2008 Ironman Pro and second at the Arnold
Classic.

EXERCISE SETS REPS

MONDAY: CHEST AND ABS

Incline dumbbell presses 3 10
Incline flyes 3 10
Wide chest presses (Hammer Strength) 3 10
Cable crossovers 7* 10
Hanging leg raises 3 20
Crunches 3 20

TUESDAY: BACK AND ABS

Wide grip chins 3 10
Underhand bent rows 3 10
One-arm dumbbell rows 3 10
Underhand lat pulldowns 7* 10
Hanging leg raises 3 20
Back extensions 3 20

WEDNESDAY: SHOULDERS

Standing military presses 3 10
Dumbbell side laterals 3 25-15-12-8[dagger]
Dumbbell front raises 3 10
Rear laterals 3 10
Rear delt machine 4 10

EXERCISE SETS REPS

THURSDAY: LEGS, CALVE5 AND ABS

Leg extensions 3 15
Unilateral leg presses 3 12
Hack squats 7 12
Lying leg curls 3 15
Standing leg curls 3 12
Stiff-leg deadlifts 3 12
Seated calf raises 3 20
Standing calf raises 3 20
Hanging leg raises 3 20
Crunches 3 20

FRIDAY:ARMS AND ABS

Biceps curls (incline) 3 10
Preacher curls 3 10
Dumbbell concentration curls 3 10
Triceps pulldowns (rope) 3 10
Lying triceps extensions 3 10
Dips 3 10
Hanging leg raises 3 20
Reverse crunches 3 20

NOTES: Keep rest periods brief from the start to the finish of each
workout. Heath recommends 45 seconds to one minute, tops, for the first
few exercises and just 30 seconds between all seven sets of the last
exercise for each bodypart. The pace is grueling, so work up to it over
the course of three to four weeks. Once you're motoring along at a
Heathian clip, though, you'll find that it's become exceedingly
difficult to keep fat on your body and comparatively easy to look like
(a) competitive bodybuilder.
* Rest no more than 30 seconds between these sets
[dagger] In each set, Heath does 25 reps, then goes heavier and does 20,
then heavier for
15, heavier again for 12 and finally one more jump in weight for 8 reps.
With arms that could stake a claim to being among the best of all time, newly supersized thighs and a back that's gone from being a weakness to a strength, Heath had obviously put his year off to good use. No longercould pundits drone on about how he couldn't compete with the big boys. He had, in his third year as a pro, become one of the big boys.

A FORM OF CARDIO

Heath's new training style yielded another benefit besides a boost in lean mass, however; one he didn't originally anticipate.

"I actually didn't get tired during prejudging at either the Ironman or the Arnold," he states. "At the Arnold, especially, the judges worked us pretty hard and I noticed that some of the other guys were really sucking wind. But I was like, 'Hey, you want me to hit another front double biceps? Sure. Here you go.' All that fast training done at altitude had a side benefit of giving me greater endurance when it came to holding poses onstage."

In fact, Heath did appear fresher than his opponents, both at the Ironman and the Arnold, as the judges put them through the paces. Waving off offers of water from the expediters, he remained poised, hands on hips, as others braced their hands on their knees for support. "The Arnold had to be the easiest show, in terms of the way I felt, that I've ever competed in," he says. "I had energy to spare."

So, where does Phil Heath go from here? Why, to his first Olympia, of course.

"I pretty much have to compete in this one," he laughs."I have a lot of people who have been waiting to see me on an Olympia stage, and I finally feel like I'm ready for it.

As of press time, Heath has six months until his Olympia debut, which is more than enough time to keep adding to the equation. "I figure I can add another five pounds or so come Olympia time," he asserts. "If I hit the stage at 235, I should do pretty well."

We concur. FLEX

BY SHAWN PERINE
SENIOR WRITER

[spamy]

After the initial set with 50 pounds, we all laugh that he left his water bottle on one of the weight stacks and, riding up and down, it somehow stayed upright throughout the 10 reps. "That's how controlled my movement is," Heath deadpans. It's a joke, not a boast, but, lest anyone misinterpret, he deflates it a moment later. "How dumb is that? Am I full of myself or what?"

Actually, Heath is one of the most humble of all bodybuilding champs. Even when Horton, Hinds and I bait him about the upcoming rematch with Darrem Charles, the rookie is always careful to express his respect for the Trinidadian posedown veteran who is closing in on 50 pro contests and who first flexed on a pro stage in 1992--when Heath was 12.

In almost every workout, the Gift is reminded that winning is never guaranteed, for, in addition to top Colorado super heavyweight Ryan Fasano, his other training partner is Rick Sosias, the fourth-place light heavyweight in last year's NPC USA Championships and the only man to ever defeat Heath (by one point, for the overall at the 2003 Colorado State Championships). "After he beat me, I figured I'd learn from him," Heath explains. "So we've been training together ever since."

Heath does another set with 60 pounds. After a set with 70, he immediately pumps out an additional 10 reps with only his right arm and 10 with his left, again using 70 pounds. "It just really finishes them off to end with the one-arms."

"GEOMETRY LESSON" Heath calls his first triceps exercise "trisets," and, although technically they're not, the term expresses the unique three-step assault on his tris, done via one movement--rope pushdowns. Each set is a 30-rep ascending set. After 10 reps, he immediately increases the weight 10 pounds for 10 more reps, after which he immediately increases another 10 pounds for a final 10. He also escalates his starting poundage by 10 each time, going 90-100-110 for his first ascending set, 100-110-120 for his second and 110-120-130 for his third.

"My next set always starts 10 pounds heavier than the last, and yet all together it seems like it's 30 pounds heavier because I'm doing 30 reps total, so every rep is heavier the second time than the first, and then every rep gets even heavier the third time. By the end, I'm starting with as much weight as I ended with the first time."

Bringing out the wood-grain striations of his tris, his form is strict and he separates the two rope sides for a maximum extension at the bottom. "With the rope, I'm able to extend. If I keep it close, I still get a pump, but if I extend out, it makes it harder. I know that because the first thing I do when it gets heavy is keep it in here [hands close together]. It makes for a longer range of motion to bring it out here [hands approximately nine inches apart] at the bottom." He adds with a grin, "A little geometry lesson there."

"NEW WINDOWS VERSION" By the time he completes the pushdowns, the long and lateral heads of each triceps resemble the braided ropes he was gripping, and everyone marvels at how much his arms have ballooned, dramatically bigger than the night before and yet losing none of their fine details. Flexing, he's startled himself by what he sees in the mirror, and he confirms that he has never looked better than at this moment in time--and yet he will look better still.
"We're going to trade this one in for the new Windows version," he jokes about his physique. "The old one you saw last night was like Windows 98, and the one you're gonna see will be like that new Vista."

Before his victory at last year's USA, Heath underemphasized arm training in order to keep his physique in balance. Since then, he's trained arms all-out. He even plans to work forearms. "If I have a freaky bodypart and it happens to be arms, that's OK, because I'm messing with some gunslingers now--guys like Lee Priest and Darrem Charles. Ronnie, Jay and all those guys have big arms. Everybody likes big arms. Still, I don't train tris as hard as I used to because those will grow out of control." The last statement explains why he's the Gift.

"SUPPOSED TO BE DROPPED"

Standing one-arm dumbbell extensions are not done textbook-style--elbow straight up and the working upper arm kept perpendicular to the floor. Instead, he lets his elbow drop, pointing his upper arm out at approximately a 45-degree angle.

"I'm afraid of an injury to my elbow, and I know if I keep it high and go down, it hurts. I have the stigma that I have good genetics, so I don't train hard, but I push it for 10 reps every set. I just don't want to get an injury. I'm young and I have plenty of time to fill out, so I don't want to get in a hurry and mess myself up. To each his own, and I don't dog anyone's form. Yeah, if you do arms and you're just really swinging it, that's stupid, but if my elbow is back here [farther out], it's still staying here, so I'm keeping the tension on the tris. If it's up here [straight up], to me, it just feels too compact and puts too much pressure on joints. The next guy might do it straight up and get big arms out of that.

"My training partners like to do overhead triceps extensions with two hands. I use one hand. I like one-arm movements, and I work the two arms slightly differently. You'll notice I'll get more reps with my left arm when I train triceps because I want to grow it to the level of my right."

Indeed, after sets of 10 reps with a 40-pound dumbbell and a 50-pound dumbbell, Heath grinds out a final eight with his right arm and then 12, counting partials, with his left, using a 70-pound dumbbell. When he can't move it again, he drops the 70, and it bounds away.

"One reason I love this gym is there's no sign saying you can't drop the weights. You can wreck yourself trying to set the weight down gingerly after going all out. Dumbbells are supposed to be dropped."

"FRONT TO BACK" Each of his three sets of machine dips with 180 pounds is doubled by performing 10 reps facing forward and promptly turning for 10 reps facing backward (toward the seat back). "Going front to back, I notice that I'm really stressing the insertion of the tris near the shoulders. For these, I like to get a fuller range of motion, too, to really stretch them out at the top."

As his workout comes to a close, the curvy fullness of his upper body looks Levrone-esque--a comparison Heath rightly sees as a supreme compliment. "I try to think about Kevin Levrone whenever I train tris or shoulders," he says. "I've been using his workouts from FLEX for the past three years just because he has the best trap-shoulder-tri combination I've ever seen."
"A LITTLE UNREAL" Afterward, the Gift takes the person who supplied half his genes to a Mother's Day lunch. They have much to be thankful for. Six days later, he conquers New York, besting not just Charles again but a real live Olympia mass monster, Dennis James. "It all seems a little unreal," he says backstage. "Just last year, I was a fan reading about these guys, and now I'm beating them." This is only the start of the "unreal" story--halfway through the first chapter, with the suspense of his next contest many pages away. This tale is only going to improve as bodybuilding's latest phenom fulfills his immense promise.

PHIL HEATH'S

ARM WORKOUT

EXERCISE SETS REPS

Barbell preacher curls 3 10

Incline dumbbell curls 3 10

Two-arm high cable curls 3 10

One-arm high cable curls 1 10

Rope pushdowns 3 30 *

One-arm dumbbell extensions 3 8-12

Machine dips 3 20 [dagger]

* The 30 reps are done in three increments of 10 reps each.

[dagger] Ten reps are performed facing forward, followed immediately by
10 reps facing backward.
RELATED ARTICLE: IN THE BEGINNING

"Know your limits. You don't want to get hurt, yet you want to go heavy. An eight- to 12-rep range is ideal. A beginner should do no more than nine sets for bis and nine for tris. You should try every exercise to find which ones work for you. Just because something works for me or someone else doesn't mean it'll work for you. I also recommend doing some [unilateral] movements for arms."

--Phil Heath

BY GREG MERRITT

[MrMetabolism]

my question wouldve been:

"Its 4/20 and you live in the mile HIGH city, why are you on here answering dumbass questions?"

[NaturalLoco]

I posted one of the last questions on there and the mods reworded it for no good reason.

lol