Bodybuilding - TV Tropes

Bodybuilders increase the mass of skeletal muscle through resistance training (which usually means weight lifting, but also includes other resistance mechanisms such as elastic bands) combined with adequate nutrition and sleep. Resistance training puts muscles under mechanical tension, which stimulates mechanisms of growth and adaptation in the tissue. At the same time, this work causes micro-tears and fatigue in the muscles used, meaning those particular muscles will need a period of rest and repair before they're back up to 100%. It is important to implement progressive overload by increasing the difficulty of exercises over time (whether through more weight or more reps), so that one's muscles be pushed to constantly improve instead of stagnating.

Unlike strongmen, Olympic weightlifters, and powerlifters, bodybuilders are not concerned with the maximum weight they can lift as a goal in and of itself; they only care about whether what they're doing will properly grow and shape their muscles from a visual perspective. ^note 

Compound barbell lifts such as the squat, deadlift, bench press, and overhead press are part of bodybuilder training, since these can be heavily loaded and are great at developing strength and size throughout the whole body. However, bodybuilders also rely on a variety of isolation exercises which more precisely target specific muscle groups, which is very important for controlling the proportions of a physique. If a certain muscle is not growing because it’s recruiting other, stronger muscles next to it do most of the work, then you need an exercise which reduces the ability of those stronger muscles to take over and forces the isolated muscle to activate. Sometimes it’s just as important to take out certain muscles you don’t want to grow; for example, lots of heavy squatting and deadlifting can cause the midsection to grow thicker from additional muscle, which is great if you’re a strongman, but bad if you’re a bodybuilder who’s trying to keep an aesthetically tapered waist. In that case, more leg pressing or leg extensions can help you grow your quads without blowing out your midsection. Bodybuilders may use free weights, machines, or both. Free weights have certain benefits such as recruiting more stabilizing muscles and being versatile for limited money and space, but machines also have their uses for accessing certain planes of movement that are difficult to get with free weights, and in reducing the risk of injury.

As a sweeping generalization, bodybuilders tend towards high volume training based on doing more reps at lighter weight instead of fewer reps at heavier weight. Doing it this way is better from a stimulus-to-fatigue ratio: while one repetition at a near-maximal weight provides more of a hypertrophy (tissue growth) stimulus to the muscles compared to one rep at a sub-maximal weight, the heavier rep causes an amount of fatigue that’s disproportionately higher compared to the advantage in hypertrophic stimulus. More fatigue means it takes more time to recover after doing that exercise, meaning you can’t train the affected muscles as frequently as you could have using lighter weight. Volume, or the total amount of weight lifted in a given period of time, is the metric most correlated with hypertrophy. This isn’t to say that you can get huge just by curling five pounds a thousand times—any amount of weight you can do for more than thirty reps stops being hypertrophic and basically turns into a form of cardio—but the important thing is to have a balance where you’re challenging yourself without overly reducing the number of sets and reps you can do throughout the week. Avoiding excessive weights also helps you keep the movement strict, control the eccentric movement (i.e. let the weight down slowly instead of just dropping it), and reduce the risk of injury.

Another technique which many bodybuilders incorporate into their programming is partial reps and limited range of motion. For example, they might only go halfway down on a squat, or might push the barbell only three-quarters of the way up while bench pressing. In the bench press example the athlete seeks better hypertrophic results by increasing the amount of time the muscle spends under tension, since locking out essentially takes the load off the muscles by shifting it onto the joints. And with the squat example, the athlete can reduce the risk of injury by avoiding the "bottomed out" position of the exercise where the muscles and joints are under the most strain, and by avoiding the range of motion where their body is weakest they increase the amount of weight they can safely lift. It is possible to overuse these techniques, and it takes a lot of discipline to keep your form and range of motion consistent without the stop points that are built into full ROM exercises. Full range of motion should be the default, while partial reps should be treated as an advanced technique.

Symmetry between the left and right sides is an important aesthetic factor. This can be a problem if, for example, an athlete finds that their left bicep naturally lags behind the right bicep in size. Injuries and muscle tears can be highly damaging to both symmetry and mass, such as in 1997 when Dorian Yates had torn both his bicep and his tricep on the left arm, making it look much smaller than his right. However, assymetry isn't always punished as much as critics think it should be, since several of the mandatory poses and especially the side poses make it possible to hide or downplay assymetrical body parts.

The word "symmetry" is often misused to mean what is more properly called "proportions", which is how the bodybuilder's frame, limbs, torso, and muscle groups relate to each other in size and prominence. At the base level you have the skeleton, which determines overall height, the length of the torso and limbs, the width of the shoulders, the size of the rib cage, and the width of the pelvis. On top of that go the skeletal muscles, which may have different shape or attachment points on different people because of personal genetics.

It is fairly common for a bodybuilder to have one or more dominant body parts, which grow more easily in response to training or take up more space on their frame by virtue of their insertions and their part in the overall structure. By the same token, almost everyone has one or more "lagging" body parts which either don't grow in response to training, are limited in size by their muscle insertions, or which the bodybuilder neglects to train enough. Somebody who's missing an important body part can get dinged on their score for being "incomplete", and there will be a real problem if an entire area of their body such as their legs or back is underdeveloped compared to the rest of them.

Having a strong body part is normally considered a good thing, since it adds "wow factor" and helps someone stand out from the crowd: the size and quality of Arnold Schwarzenegger's pecs, Dorian Yates' lats, and Tom Platz's quads helped make them famous. Having a weak body part can actually have an upside if it emphasizes the virtue of a strong body part, such as Arnold's mediocre triceps making his biceps look that much bigger. It cuts both ways, however. A bodypart that's strong can make a weakness next to it all the more glaring, as with Dennis Wolf's skinny calves not measuring up to his tree-trunk thighs.

A bodybuilder can lift as much as they want, but they're never going to get bigger unless they also consume enough nutrition and program in proper rest periods. A bodybuilder needs to consume enough calories to replace what they expend through lifting and maintain their body mass. Most important are the essential macronutrients consisting of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Protein is basically the building block of muscle, making its importance obvious. Carbohydrates help to hit overall calorie requirements—since a pure carnivore diet that provides that many calories tends to be unhealthy and impractical—and provides a ready source of energy for working out. As for fats, there are certain kinds that you should stay away from, but you do need a certain amount of fat intake for healthy hormone production, including testosterone. Micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals are also necessary, and diets which forget about micronutrients in the process of chasing certain macros can lead to health problems. Diet should start with healthy and nutritious whole foods, including green vegetables and protein sources (such as fish and poultry) that aren’t excessively high in cholesterol or saturated fats. Because of the amount of food a pro bodybuilder must consume to get the nutrition they need, it is necessary to break with the standard three meals a day and instead eat more numerous, smaller meals which add up to more food in total over the course of a day. If you're going to be a bodybuilder, and you don't know how to cook for yourself already, you'd better hurry up and learn. Macro goals are set depending on where a bodybuilder is in the process. During the off-season is when most bodybuilders focus on building mass, so they'll usually go into a caloric surplus (i.e. more than the minimum calories required to maintain current body mass) and tolerate a higher level of body fat in order to encourage strength and muscle growth. Once contest prep actually starts, they will switch to a caloric deficit (i.e. fewer calories than maintenance) and gradually cut down to the super-low body fat required on stage.

Whole foods are supplemented by—you guessed it—supplements, which include various powders and pills. The vast majority of bodybuilding supplements are unnecessary and of questionable usefulness, so you should review the scientific literature and read the labels before you believe any marketing claims. In general, if your diet is good, the only products likely to give you a significant boost are protein powder (helpful for having protein in a portable or easy-to-add form) and creatine (which can give you a little performance and strength boost if everything else is on point). Some people consume stimulants such as caffine to give them more focus and energy before hitting the gym, often in the form of pre-workout powder. Be careful about pre-workouts, since some of them contain harmful ingredients or excessive doses of caffine.

Don't forget to get your beauty sleep, too. When you're sleeping is when a lot of the body's repair functions are most active, and it's also necessary to let the nervous system recover from the effort of zapping the muscles into action. If you're deprived of sleep, you're going to be weaker in the gym and grow less muscle. Admittedly it can be kind of a challenge towards the end of prep, when hunger makes it more difficult to sleep.

If an athlete is properly conditioned on contest day, the shapes of their individual muscles will stand out and there will be crisp separations between them when they flex: for example, a sharp split between the deltoids and the upper arms, or a line separating the quadricep from the hamstring when the leg is viewed from the side. The individual components of larger muscle groups should also be separated, as when the rectus abdominis is divided into a chiseled "six pack", or all three visible heads of the quads stand out. The next aspect is being able to see the striations created by bundles of muscle fibers when the muscle is flexed; these show up in places like the pecs, deltoids, lower back, and glutes. Striations that appear to go perpendicular to the length of the muscle, called "cross striations" or "feathering", are highly prized in the triceps or quadriceps. A third aspect is the appearance of a hard, "grainy" texture to the muscles which shows muscle maturity or extreme dryness. And finally there's vascularity or the prominence of veins under the skin, which adds some cool freak factor.

If mass is what puts a contestant in the running for a top spot, then conditioning is the polish which separates the best from the rest. It is a very heavily weighted factor in contests, and for good reason. Part of the thrill of bodybuilding is seeing the human body presented like an anatomical drawing, with every possible muscle fiber and vein on display. Fat and water retention erase definition and hide away the crazy details. There also has to be a penalty for coming out of shape, in order to prevent bodybuilders from coming in as bloated and watery as possible just to look bigger. Finally, the emphasis on this factor potentially allows bodybuilders such as Rich Gaspari or Branch Warren who didn't win the genetic lottery in attributes like skeletal structure, aesthetic proportions, muscle growth, or muscle insertions to compensate for their flaws through their skill and hard work at conditioning. It is possble to simply lack so much size that no amount of conditioning would allow you to win, but conditioning can be a great equalizer once a certain minimum of size is achieved; when superior conditioning is combined with size, it tends to grant a decisive victory.

The basic elements of a bodybuilder's contest prep, undertaken in the months and weeks leading up to a contest, are dieting and cardio exercise to progressively reduce body fat percentage. At the same time, athletes need to keep lifting right up to the show in order to ensure they don't lose the muscle gains they made during the off season. It is highly recommended for an athlete to prep under the advice and supervision of a qualified coach. Prep needs to be precisely timed so that the bodybuilder's physique will "peak" on the exact day of the contest. At the very last stage, the bodybuilder will restrict their water intake and may even take diuretics (drugs which increase the amount of water the body excretes as urine) in order to get as "dry" and "peeled" as possible. Being at around 5% body fat and dehydrated is a precarious state which is not physiologically sustainable for more than a day or two; the contestant's health must be carefully monitored, and it's a dangerous balancing act to get as conditioned as possible without inducing debilitating lightheadedness, muscle cramping, or worse, especially when diuretics are involved. Some bodybuilders who went too far in the name of conditioning have had to be helped off the stage for medical attention, such as Paul Dillett at the 1994 Arnold Classic. A few are even known to have died just days after their last competition, such as Terri Harris^note  and Mariola Sabanovic-Suarez^note note . When the body is being pushed to its limits in this way, the appearance of a contestant's physique and conditioning can change for either better or worse between prejudging and the night show, or even right before the judge's eyes over the course of a routine.

Conditioning is always in tension with mass, since a certain amount of size is always sacrificed during the cutting process. Natural bodybuilders will find that their muscle mass decreases pretty dramatically as a result of cutting, partly because extremely low body fat or restrictive dieting tends to crash one’s hormone levels. "Enhanced" athletes have a much easier time holding onto their gains—since their muscle-building hormones come from an exogenous source—but even they are subject to a certain amount of downsizing. There is also the fact that a contestant's muscle bellies may appear "flat" or somewhat deflated if they show up really depleted onstage; one can compensate by "carbing up" right before the show in order to restore some fullness, but overdoing this can result in a loss of conditioning. There is also the pump-up room, a place with some equipment where contestants can do exercises to get the blood flowing into their muscles before they go on stage.

Outstanding conditioning is the most elusive art in bodybuilding. Some competitors are considered wild cards because they have the structure and muscularity to potentially win an Olympia, but have so far never managed to nail their conditioning and thus never reached their full potential. A curious fact is that conditioning can be uneven throughout the body, since fat storage and water retention tend to be concentrated in certain areas. The glutes and ham strings are the most common problem areas, and many people struggle to look as conditioned from behind as they are from the front. But outside the generalization are many exceptions; for example, Cedric McMillan tended to look more conditioned from the back than he did from the front, while Akim Williams doesn't look as conditioned above the waist as he does below. Akim is also said to be one of those bodybuilders who's cursed with "thick skin", which tends to obscure the muscles and veins underneath. Conversely, others such as Phil Heath are blessed with "thin skin" which allows every detail to be revealed. While preparation methodology is obviously important, personal genetics definitely has some influence.

Work In Progress

Whenever you talk about Bodybuilding, the elephant in the room is performance enhancing drugs or PEDs. The source of this problem is a simple fact, which is that human biology is not naturally disposed towards growing more and more muscle forever. Everybody has a certain genetic potential for maximum muscle growth, which is how big you can get before your body starts slamming on the brakes regardless of how much you eat or how hard you train. The average human living an average life will never come close to pushing their full potential in this regard, but hitting this plateau is something that actually happens to serious bodybuilders. Some people naturally wish they could overcome the limits of muscularity imposed by nature, and it has to be said that many also want to get where they're going in a shorter amount of time. As soon as science discovered a way for people to give themslves an advantage, people began trying it.

Testosterone, the primary sex hormone and anabolic steroid in males, was discovered during the 19th century. Early attempts to injest or inject exogenous^note  testosterone required extracting it from actual testicular tissue from animals such as guinea pigs and bulls; however, testicles barely store any of the testosterone they produce, so there was hardly any testosterone in the products made from them. Furthermore, this testosterone was in a form that would be neutralized by the liver if taken orally, and had a very short half life if injected, so these early treatments were useless placebos. It was not until the 1930s when researchers learned to synthesize testosterone in sufficient quantities to have any muscle-building effect, and it took about another decade to figure out esters of testosterone which could remain intact and effective inside the body. The late 1950s to early 1960s is probably the period during which bodybuilding went from a largely natural sport to one dominated by exogenous hormones. The early 60s saw the introduction of testosterone-based synthetic anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) such as dianabol, which were created in order to reduce the exaggerated masculinizing side-effects of heavy testosterone use with equal or superior muscle growth. Over the decades whole families of new androgenic compounds have been discovered, which each have distinct effects on muscle growth, recovery time from training, ability to retain muscle mass at very low body fat, and even the finer details of conditioning. The increased availability and effectiveness of steroids has been partially responsible for the increasing size of bodybuilder physiques over the decades, together with improved nutrition and exercise science.

AAS also come with various potential side effects that must not be taken lightly. They don't all happen to everybody, and some can be attenuated by "smarter" stack and cycle design by a guru with actual medical expertise, but to some extent it's a roll of the dice, and some negative outcomes become practically inevitable the longer and harder someone pushes it. Some side effects are basically cosmetic but potentially uncomfortable or embarassing, such as acne, the development of enlarged nipple or breast tissue in men (gynocomastia), and women developing a deeper voice or enlarged clitoris. Psychological and mood-altering effects of steroids may present themselves. "Roid rage" or steroid-fueled anger and aggression are infamous to the public, but this is thankfully rarer than popular media implies. The most widespread effect is actually a general increase in anxiety levels, which is more severe in some people than others. Finally there are the effects which can damage overall health and shorten a person's life, especially cardiovascular, kidney, and liver problems.

The use of AAS (at least in the absence of medical permission, or when competing in athletics) is illegal in the United States and many other countries. Organizations such as the IFBB are steroid-free on paper, but there is a general conspiracy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and "Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught". The promoters know full well that the competitors are on gear, and that they wouldn't draw the same attention if their athletes weren't enhanced, so everyone just does what they need to do for plausible deniability. Those who have retired from competition and are therefore at liberty to discuss PED use have been frank about both the advantages they’ve gained and the price that they or people they know have paid, and there’s always a debate being had about whether it’s possible to condone a certain amount of enhancement while still doing something to protect the health of the competitors.

Since the 90s, human growth hormone (HGH) and insulin have also been used to increase mass beyond what can be attained with steroids alone. Potential side effects of HGH include insulin resistance, and enlargement or unusual appearance of certain bone structures. Insulin shots are particularly dangerous because mistiming or overdose can cause a sudden drop in blood sugar, and the onset of coma or death in a frighteningly short time. Seriously, Don't Try This at Home. Since the 2010s, a newer class of drugs called SARMS (Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators) have also caught the attention of the bodybuilding world. They can have similar effects to AAS, but are supposed to be more selective in their action, suggesting the possibility of reduced masculinizing effects for a similar amount of anabolic effect. Some people seem to think these are safer than AAS, but that is premature; SARMS are still very much in the research phase and should be considered at least as risky to take as AAS.

Natural bodybuilding competitions are an attempt to have bodybuilding without the PED use, featuring mandatory testing of all competitors for banned substances. Unfortunately, the testing methods used are often far from foolproof. What’s more, if testing is only done shortly before the completion, this might prove that an athlete is clean at the time of testing, but does not necessarily mean that they are natural year-round. No matter which side you’re on, the problem of how to deal with PED use in bodybuilding will probably be around for decades to come.

Overview

Posing is the medium through which the physique is presented, and can be appreciated as an artistic skill, especially the individual posing routine. Posing on stage is more difficult than it looks, as bodybuilders have to keep all their muscles flexed as much as possible for an extended period, and maintain constant control over their bodies while they're in a physically depleted state. Bodybuilding is a game of illusion: truly great posing technique can not only make good body parts look even better, but can even transform weaknesses into strengths. For example, Dorian Yates didn't have very impressive arms in proportion to the rest of his body, but in the side tricep pose he could flatten his tricep by pressing it into his massive lat, making the tricep look way bigger than it actually was. Another case is Arnold, who was self-conscious about his waist being wide compared to contemporaries such as Sergio Olivia. Whenever he’d pose in photo shoots he would twist so that his upper body would face front but his waist would be seen from more of a side angle, making it look smaller and creating a crazy V-taper illusion.

Conversely, bad posing technique can draw attention to weaknesses, and even make body parts look worse than they really are. Take the 1988 Mr. Olympia, for example: when Gary Strydom hit the back double bicep, he retracted his scapula and shrugged his shoulders up, perhaps trying to emphasize his trapezius. This backfired by causing him to lose any semblance of width through the lats and worsened his disadvantage against the champion Lee Haney. Haney made an error of his own by pointing his toes slightly inward as he hit the back poses, hiding the outer sweep of his quads and making his legs look skinny; not enough to cancel out his dominant back, but enough to make the pose not as strong as it could have been.

Some other elements of good posing and stage presence are keeping the stomach sucked in as much as possible—including during the transitions between poses—and to remember to flex all muscle groups no matter what the pose. This is important to make one’s conditioning come across, since if you forget, for example, to flex your quads while hitting the front double bicep or front lat spread, you will look like you don’t have enough separation in your thighs.

Mandatory Poses

At its heart, bodybuilding is a sport of comparisons. Sure, it's important to look good on stage by yourself, but you can't win or place well unless you're able to stand next to a bunch of other intimidating physiques and still make the judges think you're beating them.

When it comes time to do comparisons, whether in prejudging or in finals, the whole pool of bodybuilders in the show will be divided into different "call outs", where as few as two and as many as six bodybuilders will be called out to pose at the same time. The first call out consists of those whom the judges are considering for the highest placings, the second callout for the next several places down, and so on. If the judges decide one of the competitors looks too good (or not good enough) for the call out they're in, they can bump them up to a higher (or down to a lower) call out. After the bodybuilders in a call out go through the mandatory poses the first time, the judges may shuffle around who's standing next to who in the call out, and make them do the poses again so they can see a side-by-side comparison between people who weren't next to each other the first time. They can also winnow down the size of the call out as they go in order to better scrutinize the ones who are really neck-and-neck with each other.

Mandatory poses are those which the judges specifically call for, and use as their basis for judging in the comparison rounds. There are currently eight mandatory poses in IFBB men's open bodybuilding: four front poses, two rear poses, and two side poses. Other organizations and divisions such as NPC Women's Physique may omit some of these, usually the lat spreads and the most muscular. Bodybuilders also work the mandatory poses into their individual routines according to their preference. Also, there are certain poses where there's more than one correct way to hit it. Some names of bodybuilders are provided who showed good technique and/or embodied desired attributes in a given pose.

* Quarter Turns: Technically part of the symmetry round rather than the mandatory poses, these are the first positions that the bodybuilders are required to take on stage. Back in Arnold's day the contestants would legitimately relax their bodies as they stood before the judges, and do the side relaxed poses in true profile without twisting the upper body, but since then the quarter turns have evolved into stylized versions where the body is held tensed and fully flexed like any other pose. The modern quarter turns are what we’ll talk about here. Contestants start in the front relaxed pose, standing upright facing the judges with elbows held out to the sides at a 45 degree angle, forearms pointing down, and hands in fists. Then they do variations of the same pose facing stage right, backstage, and stage left. The side relaxed poses involve twisting the upper body towards the judges while holding the near arm back and the far arm forward so as not to hide any body parts. In women’s events, contestants with long hair must remember to adjust their hair at each turn so as not to hide the side of the body being presented (men with long hair usually tie it up in a bun to avoid this problem). During the quarter turns the judges check for bilateral symmetry and overall proportions.

• Front Double Bicep (FDB): Start by bending at the knees to activate the quads. Raise the elbows up to shoulder height at either side, contract the biceps by curling the forearms inward towards the head, and contract the wrists for added pop. Pull the hands back as far as possible so as not to hide the tricep sweep. While the obvious purpose is to show off the size of the arms and of the biceps in particular, this pose exposes the whole front of the body so that overall silhouette and development can be evaluated. For the sake of V-taper it's important to flare the lats while keeping the chest full and the stomach sucked in; as always, it’s important to flex the quads.
  • There are basically two ways to hit it: the standard version where the execution is straight and symmetrical (see Brian Buchanan), and the "artistic" version with the torso tilted (see Frank Zane).
• Back Double Bicep (BDB): Akin to a flipped-around version of the front double, but even more than the arms this pose is about the development of the back muscles: make sure to really pull back those hands, lean back, and crunch down on the lower lats. Glutes, Hams, and calves also count. This is normally the pose most heavily weighted by the judges in the open division, since it’s the one that has the largest number of muscle groups on display at once (for example, all three heads of the deltoids) and there are fewer competitors who look as complete and conditioned from the back as they do from the front. Ronnie Coleman and Phil Heath were hard to beat.
• Front Lat Spread (FLS): Facing the judges, press both fists against the sides of the stomach right above the pelvis, rotate the elbows and shoulders forward, slightly shrug the shoulders, and lean backwards in order to make the lats look as large and wide as possible. In men’s open bodybuilding, the ideal is to have as little space visible between your lats and your forearms as possible. This one is all about showing off V-taper and width through the shoulders, but it also helps to have good pecs, delts, and legs. Lee Haney and especially Dorian Yates were dominant in this one.
• Rear Lat Spread (RLS): The front spread flipped around, to show the back while the lats are flared wide. It used to be that sheer width and V-taper was the main factor, as with Lee or Dorian, but Phil Heath would later make it possible to compensate for lack of width through thickness and conditioning. Glutes and hams also count.
• Side Chest (SC): Start facing either stage left or stage right as dictated by circumstance, bend the knees, grasp the wrist of your near arm using your far hand, and twist your chest towards the judges while pulling back your near elbow and trailing either your left foot or right foot behind you. This pose shows off the pecs, shoulders, and arms, and also the side of the leg. If you open up too much then you aren’t showing the thickness of the pecs from the side, but if you close off too much you lose width and size through the upper body while hiding the far arm. Resist the temptation to relax the midsection, because even if it’s partly hidden by your arm the viewers will note whether your abs are flexed or your gut's hanging out. Arnold Schwarzenegger was great at the more old-fashioned way of propping up the chest on top of the rib cage, while Dexter Jackson is a natural in the more straight-on modern style.
• Side Tricep (ST): Facing stage left or stage right, clasp your fingers together behind your back, trail one foot, and twist your upper body partly to the front as you straighten your near arm parallel to your torso. Flex your tricep while pressing it into your lat to make it look bigger, and keep your midsection tight. Dorian Yates and William Bonac are good examples of the near-foot-forward style.
  • A variation is to not clasp the hands behind, but straighten the near arm for a similar presentation while holding the far hand in front of the chest. Some go through this as part of a transition between poses, as in the case of Phil Heath, while others such as Roelly Winklaar do it as their main Side Tricep pose, perhaps because he has a hard time clasping his hands behind his torso.
• Ab and Thigh (AAT): Face the judges, place your hands on top of or behind your head, and flex your midsection and thighs. While it’s obvious which parts are the main focus, it helps to have decent lats, since even when they aren’t flared they improve your taper. This pose tends to reward a lean, aesthetic bodybuilder with great conditioning and definition through the midsection, such as Shawn Ray or Shawn Rhoden, but it can also be surprisingly good for a mass monster like Dorian Yates or Roelly Winklaar who has sheer mass in the thighs, width through that lats, and a decent midsection.
  • A variation involves putting one hand behind the head and showing off that side of the torso, while flexing the other arm in front of the torso in a kind of one-handed most muscular. This can either be used in addition to the conventional ab and thigh if the poser wants to show off well-developed oblique and serratus muscles (Shawn Ray), or if the bodybuilder feels the conventional ab and thigh is unflattering toward their physique (William Bonac), as a substitute for it.
• Most Muscular (MM): The last mandatory pose, which had been around for decades as an optional pose but didn’t become a mandatory in the Olympia until 2004 or so. The common feature is that you flex your arms in a downward position, but there are several variations, and a bodybuilder may show more than one of them when the most muscular is called.
  • The "crab" version, where the bodybuilder leans their upper body forwards while stepping forward with one foot, and holds their forearms in front of their waist like a crab's claws whilst flexing everything mightily. This version shows off the arms, shoulders, traps, pecs, and quads; one should lean forward far enough to make the traps visible, but not so far that the chest gets hidden. A strong pose for Phil Heath and Dexter Jackson, the latter being an example of a person who can voluntarily pop up his traps to make them look bigger.
  • The "hands clasped" version, where the bodybuilder will clasp their hands in front of their stomach or waist while standing fairly upright. This version requires good deltoid roundness and tricep sweep in order to look impressive in, which is why it worked so well for Kevin Lavrone.
  • The "hands-on-hip" version, where the bodybuilder flexes while resting their hands on their hips. This version gives an unobstructed view of the torso, and is good for bodybuilders who are wide across the shoulders, have good delts, and a good V-taper. On one hand it can work well for a structurally gifted mass monster such as Big Ramy, but on the other hand it can be good for a smaller, more aesthetic guy who has the aforementioned virtues but not particularly impressive arms, as was the case for Shawn Rhoden.