EXCLUSIVE RONNIE COLEMAN COLUMN!
With Big
Ronnie
Coleman,
Eight-Time
Mr. Olympia110 MD musculardevelopment.com July 2019How Often to Train Body Parts
A lot of bodybuilders train body parts just once a
week. You built your physique training everything
twice a week. Do you think everyone would get
bett er gains over time hitt ing all their muscle
groups twice a week, or do you think most people
couldn’t handle it in terms of recovery?
Most people wouldn’t be able to recover training
hard and heavy six days a week like I did. I was
always fi ne that way. Back in high school football, I
used to play the whole game. The coach never took
me off the fi eld! And in college, we had two-a-day
practices and I would be up all night studying as an
accounting major. We are all diff erent. I would try
training body parts every fi ve days and see if you
can recover from that. Some people might nee d a
full week.Pain While Lifting:
Deal With It
With all the heavy training you did,
how did you manage to avoid horrible
shoulder and knee pain? Did you take
extra time to warm up and stretch, or
do you think you were just lucky?
I had plenty of shoulder, knee and
elbow pain, but I dealt with it and
didn’t complain. I always had a high
pain tolerance. If you watch my videos,
you’ll see I always had at least sleeves
on my elbows, but a lot of times I had
knee wraps for support because the
pain was so bad. I took a lot of Advil
and ibuprofen too. My joints were
always infl amed. Those areas still
hurt today, but it’s nowhere near as
bad because I don’t train as heavy as
I used to.More Wins With Better Condition
Considering you were naturally always lean, do
you ever look back and think maybe Chad tortured
you more than was necessary with the contest diets
when you were Mr. Olympia? Could you have probably
eaten more carbs or done less cardio?
Nope, no way! For one thing, I didn’t diet for 16 weeks
like most of the guys. My diets were eight to nine
weeks. Before I started working with Chad and cutt ing
carbs and doing all that cardio, my condition was never
too good. Once I started prepping the way he told me
to, I started winning shows that very season, including
my fi rst Mr. Olympia in 1998.PER BERNAL PHOTOS