Real Deal Workouts

In the early ’90s, the Buffalo Bills fought their way through the AFC playoffs to the promised land of the Super Bowl only to get punked—for four straight years. Chris Cormier can top even that. He’s one of the most successful competitors in the history of the Arnold Classic. In his nine Arnolds, he never placed lower than fifth. He’s tied with Flex Wheeler for the most top-two finishes and one behind Dexter Jackson for top-three finishes. But those marks only highlight the depth of the Real Deal’s searing frustration, because Wheeler and Jackson are tied with each other for the most A.C. titles—four. Cormier has none. 

Let’s look at

 it another way. In the 25 Arnold Classics prior to this year, 16 men finished second. Of those, four did so multiple times. Three were runner-up twice, but two of those subsequently won the title, and the third is Phil Heath, who takes great consolation in his Sandow collection. Cormier is the odd man out. Not only is he the only person to be second more than twice and the only person to be second more than twice who never won, but he was also second a ludicrous six times. All in a row.

For six straight years from 2000 to 2005, he fended off all challengers—except one. For him, it was torturous. But, with time, we can place his achievement in perspective. Competitive bodybuilding is, first and foremost, about victories, but judging panels rank entrants from best to worst, and the Arnold trails only the Olympia for lineup quality. So let’s give only congratulations to Cormier and no condolences. A half-dozen consecutive runner-up finishes in bodybuilding’s No. 2 contest is a string of consistent excellence worthy of celebration. To honor it, we present the six training tenets that made Chris Cormier almost but not quite unbeatable for six straight Arnold Classics.

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1. KNOW THE CLASSICS

Chris Cormier grew famous in the ’90s, but he first competed in the late ’80s. Then, during his formative years, classical symmetry was still at a premium. Lee Labrada, Bob Paris, and Berry DeMey were pro posedown perennials, and eight-time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney, at 5'11" and 240, dominated with breadth but remained forever aesthetic. That was the paradigm the Real Deal followed. Even when he competed at 260, as at the 2004 Arnold Classic, the 5'10" Cormier strived for a pleasing, proportional look.

To keep your physique in balance, you need to place a special emphasis on your weakest parts, as well as areas that are frequently neglected. “Every week, devote one workout to bringing up a weakness,” Cormier instructs. “The key is to make it specific and focus on a small muscle or part of a larger muscle or body part. Some examples are the upper chest, rear delts, and leg adductors. In addition, train hamstrings in a separate workout from quads so you can put more energy into them.”

2. ACCENTUATE THE "X"

Cormier was blessed with a narrow hip structure, but many men with even better skeletons have obliterated their shapes with hastily added mass. The Real Deal never did, mostly because he was always conscious of where to add and where to subtract (or, at least, remain constant) to emphasize his physique’s X-shape. His best pose may have been the standing relaxed because of the striking differential between his shoulders and waist and between his waist and legs. He earned his X the old-fashioned way, in the gym, emphasizing his medial delts, de-emphasizing his hips and obliques, and accentuating his outer quads.

He recommends you do plenty of side laterals, wide-grip upright rows, and behind-the-neck overhead presses to focus on medial delts. A narrow stance on exercises like leg presses and hack squats will focus on the vastus lateralis (outer quads). As for the middle, avoid weighted side bends and similar exercises that grow the obliques. “You want a tight waist, not a wide one,” he states.

3. MIND YOUR MIDDLE

The waistline

 is a topic Cormier returns to over and over again. Don’t get him started on the blown-out bellies seen too often on today’s stages. He thinks bodybuilding lost its emphasis on slender centers and eye-catching abs in an insatiable quest for ever more size. The Real Deal harkens back to his immediate forefathers in the ’80s, giants of their era like Haney and Mike Christian, as well as his own rivals in the ’90s, Flex Wheeler and Shawn Ray, as examples of the mass-with-class paradigm. And the key was always their tight waistlines. “If there’s a single body part that is the hallmark of a classic physique, it is the midsection,” he avers. “It’s the centerpiece of the entire physique. Every pose from every angle starts with it. A small waist makes shoulders and backs look wider, chests fuller, and gives legs that outer fare. 

Distended midsections and wide waists were never seen in the classic days because abs were trained with the same dedication as any other body part.” He recommends hitting abs every other day with an emphasis on various types of crunches and leg or knee raises. He also cautions to not gain too much weight too fast in the quest for an ever-bigger body weight. Doing so frequently leads to a bloated middle that may prove difficult to deflate.

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4. TEST YOURSELVES

At his best, Chris Cormier was even stronger than he looked, so much so that we put him on our recent list of the 10 strongest pro bodybuilders of all-time (December 2013). But there were two things about his strength that distinguished him from many heavy-metal movers. First, his form was impeccable. He strived to make exercises more difficult, not less.

You’ll

 see even some greats like Branch Warren bouncing the bar of their chests during bench and incline presses. In marked contrast, Cormier stopped the bar’s descent three inches above his pecs, breaking the weight’s momentum before powering it up. In this more-challenging style, he still incline-pressed 405 for 12. And that brings up the second thing that distinguished his strength. Because his foremost goal was accumulating muscle, he strived to grow stronger for 10 or more reps.

To become progressively stronger (and bigger), Cormier believed in pushing maximum sets to failure. For this reason, he almost always trained with at least one partner. And, especially on presses, one of those partners would be poised with helping hands to keep the set going when the Real Deal finally faltered on his own.

“My favorite number of reps is 10 to failure, of course,” Cormier said in 1995. “However, that doesn’t mean you should avoid going as heavy as possible now and then.” Back then, when he was just 27 and three years from his first Arnold, he occasionally pyramided up to apex sets of one or two reps to test his strength. It was a practice he abandoned with age, but, when his joints were more accepting, he felt it shocked his body into heightened growth and boosted his confidence in using ever-greater iron in the 10 to 12 rep range.

5. TAKE THE HIGH ROAD

Cormier is celebrated for his proportionate development, but if there is one body part that separated him from most of his contemporaries, it was his legs. There was some deep and distinctive tread on those wheels. When he nailed his conditioning, his quad separation was arguably the best ever seen. His sartorius stood out like seat belts. Cormier earned his leg size and separation by repeatedly bursting through the pain barrier—but not at the squat rack. After a back injury while squatting when he was 19, he was forced to fnd an alternative.

“The movement I chose was the leg press,” he remembers. “More important than the exercise was how I did it in a new training style. The simple answer to my injury was to use high reps in my leg training—much higher than most people. No longer did I do sets of 4–10 reps, but rather, I pushed through 20 reps. I found that I was growing at a far faster rate on higher reps—so much so that legs became my No. 1 body part.”

This winner of 11 pro titles returns to his critique of current bodybuilders. “One thing I often notice in today’s physiques is the lack of detail,” he contends. “They’re bigger, but that crisp, fnely developed look to each muscle is missing. Deeply etched cuts are the result of pain in the gym. This is the pain that comes from high reps and heavy weight. People usually think that doing high reps means you’re training light, but that’s wrong. On leg presses, I would regularly do sets of 20 to 30 reps with more than 1,000 pounds, and sometimes I even pushed as high as 50 reps. I forced my body to do more than I ever believed possible. That’s how you etch in detail.”

6. KEEP THE CHANGE

As his transformational switch from low-rep squats to high-rep leg presses illustrates, Chris Cormier was always willing to alter his workouts. For years, he was trained by Charles Glass, who taught him how to hit body parts from diverse angles and alter common exercises to stress his muscles in unique ways. This was especially true on back days, when Glass would have him do various rows and pulldowns in styles he never anticipated. “With all the machines available in gyms today, there should be no trouble in adding variety to your workouts,” he states.  “Exercise variety will make sure that you hit all the parts of a muscle for complete development to give you that 3-D look.” 

Cormier was so committed to trying new training methods that in 2009, at 42, he proved an old dog can learn new tricks when he journeyed to England to train high-intensity-style with Dorian Yates. There’s a video of the Real Deal losing his preworkout protein after a particularly stressful leg workout under Yates’ tutelage. It just goes to prove that Cormier, who is himself a successful personal trainer at Gold’s Venice today, was never afraid to push his physique to new levels in the gym to achieve new heights on the stage. “Don’t be afraid of change.” So says one of the most successful competitors in the history of the Arnold Classic. “You’ll never grow by doing the same thing over and over. Change is the essence of bodybuilding.”

SIX SECONDS

In 1999, Cormier

 broke into bodybuilding’s upper echelon when he was third at the Arnold Classic. For the following six years, he was runner-up at the annual event in Columbus, OH. We look back at that sextuplet of seconds.

• 2000 Flex Wheeler Two weeks earlier, when Wheeler looked watery at the Ironman Pro, Cormier relegated his close friend to runner-up. In Columbus, Wheeler had regained his cuts. Still, the Real Deal, at 252, was 16 pounds heavier than the winner, and with much better legs. And at 32, his stock was rising fast.
• 2001 Ronnie Coleman Cormier would’ve easily taken this one, if not for the fact that the reigning Mr. Olympia decided he wanted an Arnold trophy to go with his Sandows.
• 2002 Jay Cutler Again, Cormier ran into a buzz saw. Coming of his stunning second to Coleman at the ’01 Olympia, Cutler was the talk of bodybuilding when he stepped onstage in Columbus.
• 2003 Jay Cutler Of the six, this wasCormier’s most decisive loss. At 241, he was both smaller and smoother than usual. Meanwhile, Cutler was fuller and sharper than the year before.
• 2004 Jay Cutler And this was his least decisive loss. Trying a new approach, Cutler came in lighter and fatter but tighter. Meanwhile, at 260, Cormier was at his heaviest. In a toss-up, the Real Deal was edged out by a single painful point.
• 2005 Dexter Jackson At previous Arnolds, the Blade was in Cormier’s rearview mirror and then lurking in his blind side. This year, he made his move. The bigger Cormier was on, but he couldn’t match the winner’s HD details. Jackson went on to win three more Arnolds, so far. FLEX