My name is Joe Cross I live in South Manchester area been training now well
training for six seven years but competing since 2016, that was when I did my first
competition. So I was 18 years old in the first competition and now I'm 23
years old. So it kind of started a few weights in my shed at 16 and people would say
"ahh you know, you're getting getting a little bigger". But I think it's when I started
full-time work which was at 18 you've got a bit more routine structure moved away
from the college lifestyle and in a sense when you move away from that
lifestyle the structure is what defines bodybuilding
it's the regimented you you don't see results in weeks it's just being
monotonous and everyday repeating the same stuff even if you don't see results
you just gotta trust the process and stick to it. Training wise it was a
bodybuilding split so it was chest one day arms the next, back one day shoulders
and how that differs till now how were trained is completely worlds apart
because for me when you start researching into obviously protein
synthesis only lasts 48 hours so if you are looking into training techniques if
you train chest on a Monday probably by Wednesday Thursday depending how you've
trained it you could go again and hit it again and then probably again so you
could two to three times a week you could hit that muscle which is two over
the year that's two to three times more growth in my eyes. So as soon as protein
synthesis basically comes back to baseline I want to be hitting that
muscle again so you know to make it grow. So that's that's kind of then I moved
across to have like a push-pull legs kind of split.
So for me on pretty much any exercise it's always slow eccentric so you probably see on
the reps like a three-second coming down and then for me I like dead stopping
at the bottom so I'll come to a complete pause and then I'll go again it just
takes any momentum out and for me that's actually a big big thing in
injury prevention. If you stop it at the bottom a lot of people get injured from
bouncing out the bottom it's that so the elasticity on the tendon when you're coming out the bottom
But if you dead stop and then go you are moving the muscle
So that the only thing moving that weight is the muscle and then the positive
phase, so the concentric that's as fast as you can that's that's explosive so
explosive up - three seconds down - pause explosive up - slow down - that's usually
it's kind of standard on pretty much every every compound exercise. How I
program things is I have two rotations for each this is kind of what Jamie has
drilled into me so I have two rotations of push two of pull and two of legs and
they all have a different focus so I have a push day one which is a chest
focus and a push day two which is shoulder focus and then a pull thickness
day and a pull width day. And then a legs day which is hamstring and then a
quad one so we're kind of always getting a different focus but the the mistake a
lot of people for me would make is they repeat exercises every week so you you've
got one workout you go in you see all the time people go "right, I'm flat benching"
I want to get my flat bench up, so I'll flat bench today, next session flat bench
flat bench or squat, I want to get my squat up, you know, it's a they do the same things in the
same order. And for me if you're only doing that every week or so you're not
really getting you've given your body chance to recover and gain strength and
you just end up plateauing. But wait not forget if you're doing to push sessions
they're always complement each other even though you're not doing flat bench
you know you do an incline dumbbell they're always gonna support you always
going to be getting stronger so by the time you come back to it it might be ten
days and so since your last flat bench, but you're more likely to go up. So progressive
overload is kind of for me the absolutely fundamental to growing in
training. Logging your numbers making sure you beat them. So I don't write down on
my logbook numbers I've literally got all the sessions noted and then my numbers
on and each side. So you save them on your phone rather than a traditional notepad
and pen? Yeah I'm not so traditional in that sense, I don't want the pen and paper in the gym.
So in terms of programming push work out would be so chest dominant it
be a chest chest press a shoulder press and then a weighted dip because push is
chest shoulders triceps. So get the compounds out of the way and then they go
into a chest fly a shoulder isolation like a you know standing side raise
something like that and then I do tricep isolation. So I'm working through my compounds
first and we've got the most energy and then it go across to the the isolation.
But like I said there's a slightly less volume in that one workout it compared
to doing a full chest or a full arm session but there's so much crossover
you'll he'll feel it the next day yeah and it means you can then do it twice in
a week which for me is a lot more beneficial like I said. But what I will
say that is if you're only doing one chest compound on one shoulder you gotta
take them sets to the Death like you you can't
half arse a set you've got a you've got to take it all the way there to make
sure your she doing the damage. Some sets might with like a rest-pause you'll hit
as many as you can your rack it, count to then, hit as many as you can on the same weight
count to ten it hit as many as you can on the same weight, and that's one set. So you've got to make
sure them sets count but in my head if I've only got one chance to to hit a squat
that week and I'm not doing it again for ten days but you've got a switch switch
on your mindset and you've got hit that set otherwise if you flump it it's
another ten days before I can do it and that's that's kind of mindset I go in with
whereas if you're doing squats you got four sets to you know half arse
do it oh I'm doing it again next week it doesn't actually really matter if I
don't hit my numbers yeah, so yeah mindset plays a massive role in training.
So the peak of last year's off-season I used to do
a shoulder focus push day where I started with dumbbell press and progressed them
up to 16 reps top set. So now I have to put a chest press before them otherwise
it's just too light. But yeah trust me fifty after a chest press feels like a
60 or 65
I know people got different approaches about failure, that you shouldn't always do it every
session because of your central nervous system and stuff but in my head I know where
failure is and I know how hard it is and I will always push what last rep I mean
And no matter if I can't hit it I'll always go for it so like all-out
failure for me is yeah and that's kind of push-pull legs needs that because
it's such low volume approach you need to take them set there
yeah so for a beginner I mean I'm gonna only do two working sets per exercise as
well so I'll do a heavy loading set and then a back off yeah then I'll move on
so it's only two sets of chest press but obviously for someone that's not
saying I'm really advanced but for someone that can't take their sets
there if I was programming a session for them you'd probably do like four sets to
make sure they get held the most out of it but the more advanced you get you
think you'd need more volume but it's actually the opposite because you can
create such damage in short short sets and it's also the same with the amount
of training days the more advanced they've got the more rest days you need
because I'm battering myself that much. So obviously you wearing a hoodie yeah.
Why is that? You'll never catch me in a vest
No? Never. I think if I hard arms like yours I would be wearing vests to work mate.
When I wear a vest, it sounds ridiculous, but I
only see things that I need to improve, so training is just the time not to even
think about what I look like and just get on with it and train hard. So I mean I've got a t-shirt on
underneath but I'll never really train in vest, not unless I'm in peak
week or the week after the show that's about it, so two weeks of the year. I don't
know you know it Trained by JP's website - Jordan Peters. That is a ridiculous
source of knowledge for like £6.99 £7.99 a month it is unbelievable so it
covers absolutely everything you could want to know about bodybuilding
training nutrition supplementation I mean that has got a forum section with
everything but then it's also got educators on the site so it's got like
Dr. Dean he's like a you know PhD doctor yeah there's Hilly
he's also like very clued up got all sorts of you know nutrition exercise
degrees, so you ask any question on there you know you getting it back from a
reputable source yeah and then also like Jordan and all the rest of the team will
post training videos and he also does videos on the subjects of all drugs
steroids and everything so that is probably the biggest thing that you don't want to be
reading forums online because, people don't have a clue what they're
on about and fortunately enough he's come out
with a source that he puts videos out and it's not... it's based on research and it's
based on he's had thousands of clients is it's not just theoretical it's
applied as well yeah and so he puts out what you should actually take for your
first cycle, second cycle what does this drug do what's the dosage what does he's done
a video on it what every drug you should take, well you know not should take
but could take in the sport yeah but actual dosages timings how to take
it so if you're gonna take that decision and that step to go down that route it's
invaluable. So yeah we're going to do a single drops set here, and then there's quite a good technique
that I do where once I failed on body weight I'll jump up and then I'll do the
negative, and I'll jump up again and I'll just extend the negatives by like three
to five reps because you've always got more negatives because it's a stronger
so come in in the eccentric phase you're always stronger than you are at the
positive so I'm basically fucking myself in in both phases. So that's a
technical term yeah? Yeah a technical term. Best way to describe it.
So yeah when I competed in 2016 so looking at three
years ago it was the offseason prior to that so probably three and a half years
ago I decided to take that route and luckily enough looking back I didn't
actually do anything stupid I know I noticed you see people now and they say
looking back I you know I completely did summat ridiculous and now I know what
to actually do it was stupid but luckily enough at the time I had people around
me that I could kind of trust I didn't have anything that the site or anything
like that book I had people that I knew wouldn't fob me off so I think yeah and
which which is a good thing but now obviously you got better sources to
follow looking back I probably didn't have
enough information to hand to actually do it but it comes hand in hand with
competing unfortunately that's the nature of the sport
obviously there is natural Federation's but the look I want to achieve it you
have to take it but I mean what I would say is unless you were gonna do it
competitively I probably wouldn't take the risk
Yeah that's just to increase blood flow to the muscle and I think like a
stretch under tension like that especially super-setted
is good for injury prevention so you're obviously holding this stretch portion so
a lot of people will say to me how do you have such good range of motion in
your shoulders and stuff like, because when I shoulder press I've got no issue going
right to the bottom the same with chest I've got quite a good stretch because I
find most on muscle groups I'll either superset with an isolation or at the
very end like I do a weighted pull up and I'll just hang and just let the
stretch like they're lat stretch so just think it increases blood flow but
it's stretching under tension so you just really exaggerating in the stretch portion
Bodybuilding is longevity and is this the best bodybuilders who can do the
same stuff every day for as long as they can. if I could do what I'm doing now
for the next 20 years 25 years I'll probably only Olympia stage but
injuries come health problems come can normal life issues and obviously the
motivation who wants to do it for that long So I'm going to do a set of strict reps
kind of the form have been doing on
everything else and then I'll do a rest pause but on the rest pause I won't move
the weight or drop it, but I'll go into cheat reps. So I'd just like to clarify that because
it will look like I'm doing horrendous form but it is for a purpose this momentum just it's
almost like a self spot just to get a bit of momentum just to drive it down
and it works it might look stupid. One piece of advice is don't
waste time don't waste at the amount of like I said the years I wasted doing
things half-heartedly with nutrition training all the rest of it just either
pay-for a coach or it's hard to do the level of research you need the coach is
probably the best thing the best investment you could make because for me
if you spend the first two to three years you're still paying for your gym
membership you're paying for all your supplements you're paying for your
nutrition you're a coach might be you know 100-150 depending on the ability coach
it is a big investment but it saves you so much time the long run
realistically for me time was everything if I could rewind to like 17, and if I had a
coach then and I knew what I knew now I know it's always like you know in
hindsight looking back all the rest of it but if if I could have been as
efficient as I am now from 17 God knows where I'd be now if I had six years of
being like I am now so yeah if you got the knowledge and the training bang on
from day one you know you'd grow that so much faster and you would progress so
much faster. Like the people that I follow on Instagram and like learn from and take like take
good things away so that's that kind of my aim to be fair for next year
so maybe we're not a vlog but just trying to put more media out there that's
actually of benefits to people are not just picture with a shitty caption that means
nothing. Yeah, so valuable content rather than just inspiration?
Yeah exactly. Because to be fair, not in a big headed way or anything, but a lot of people have said to me recently
like I do have a lot of knowledge I probably don't realize that I have
because I surround myself with people who are very knowledgeable and I kind of
think my knowledge is probably irrelevant but to the vast majority of
people it's probably of some value. It depends if they share it as well.
Well yeah exactly so