Jenny Lynn is a figure and women’s fitness icon but when you remove the glitz and glamour, how is she really?

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I recently had the pleasure of interviewing  IFBB figure pro and legend Jenny Lynn for the podcast.After hearing from her about her upcoming DVD, I was excited to see a side of figure and fitness training that I was not aware of.

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Amanda Adams has broken into the  fitness modeling industry  FAST! I wanted to sit down with her and get to know her better and get her to reveal some information on how she got her body to look the way it does.

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Heather Armbrust is considered one of the top female bodybuilders in the field today; as well as the biggest threat to Iris Kyle, the current Ms. Olympia and Ms International.  However, Iris Kyle can take a deep breath as her biggest threat has withdrawn from the 2010 Arnold due to injury.

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In this edition of the Jimmy Smith Training Podcast we cover

-Why it’s bad to love protein as much as we do

-How to design the one true diet to build muscle and burn fat

-Why no one is ever truly carb sensitive.

Plus our special guest this week….

Marzia Prince stops by to discuss the 2009 Ms Figure International, bikini model training and dieting, modeling and how she got to be known as “the Gaspari girl”

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Jimmy Smith Training Podcast-Mr.Olympia 2009 Preview With Marzia Price

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I recently sat down with Mel Warrington, a figure competitor just days away from an important contest to get inside her head to see what she’s thinking.

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Lee Haney, the only 8-time Mr.Olympia used to say “assimilate don’t annihilate” when he was talking about volume in a training session. Lee would often tell people that it was at nighttime that that you grew. Then research started coming out showing that muscle protein synthesis was high for upwards of 24 hours post exercise. So people started to think about what they could do to take advantage of their nighttime nutrition.

After all, if we just trained a muscle, it’s possible to focus on that muscle with your nutrition and ensure that you grow. So if we recover and grow while we’re sleeping them why do we ignore it? Why would we ignore the seven to nine hours and completely miss our bedtime nutrition? Without proper nighttime nutrition our body will need amino acids for energy and if we don’t feed our body then where do you think those amino acids are going to be pulled from? That’s right, our muscles. Don’t take your nutrition at night for granted.

Nighttime Nutrition Step One: Make sure that you’re sleeping enough. No amount of protein or supplements will help you recover and grow if you aren’t getting adequate sleep. No, sleep after you’re drunk doesn’t count. Most people have no clue how delicate the relationship between a healthy metabolism and sleep is, if we sleep less our metabolism gets screwed up.

Look at sleep as two phases (there’s actually five), REM sleep, not Michael Stipe, and deep sleep. Once we hit deep sleep our body will start changing hormone patterns and will put us into a even deeper sleep, almost like a coma. It’s during this period that that our body will try to repair, recover and grow. Once we progress to REM sleep we actually start to wake up, our body starts go through more normal functions (blood pressure increases as does heart rate).

Nighttime Nutrition Step Two: After we assured that we are actually getting a good nights sleep then the next option is to manipulate our hormones naturally. Research shows that testosterone, growth hormone and IGF-1 are all elevated at nighttime. So what can we do to make sure that we aid them in increasing? For one, we need to make sure that we aren’t eating any sugar pre-bed. We don’t want our blood sugar levels to fluctuate during the night, instead we want a steady pulse of blood sugar. To accomplish this, make sure that your last meal consists of healthy fats, protein and fiber.

What protein is better and how much protein do you need? Click that link and look deeper into that issue. In short, I really don’t think it matters that much if you choose whey or casein. I would say that to be on the “safe” side, you should go with casein and whey mix.

Taking about 2-3 grams of glutamine pre-bed in water and on a empty stomach has been shown in research to increase growth hormone.

Nighttime Nutrition Step Three: Now we need to make sure that you’re hydrated. Going to bed dehydrated is like wearing high water pants today. It just isn’t cool. All of the cell processes that happen at night require the cell to be hydrated for optimal work. A hydrated muscle cell is a anabolic muscle cell. Look into adding taurine and glutamine into your diet as well as just drinking enough water throughout the day.

Nighttime Nutrition Step Four:  So we’re getting enough quality sleep, we’re not eating sugar before bed and we’re drinking a whey and casein protein shaker with some essential fatty acids and fibers pre-bed as well as just being hydrated. What else can we go in our pre-bedtime nutrition to ensure that we build muscle and lose fat? Well, we can make sure that our immune system is healthy. Why do we care about our immune system?

A healthy immune system decreases catabolic processes and improves protein synthesis.  So how do we improve our immune system. Aside from getting sleep, consuming whey and casein protein as well as glutamine and vitamin C on top of a moderate fat, high protein and low carb diet. A good six pack diet is a great place to start if you are unsure of what type of diet you need to be on.

Shoulders have always been my favorite bodypart. They have always been that area that I just wanted to be wide as all hell. It’s cool right? You wear a white t-shirt in the spring and you just look big. You walk on the beach in the summer and you just look big. Not to mention that it makes your waist smaller. All big pluses. The problem was, I wasn’t born with this natural wide clavicle like most meatheads that you see trying to look huge in the bar. I needed to find shoulder workout information to help me grow, just not the basic “do shoulder presses”.

The Tri-Set Theory

I first learned about this method when I was talking to a fellow trainer that I respected.  He mentioned that he was having his clients go past few fatigue. For example, they’d do a set of 15 reps of sitting side raises then they’d stand up and do 12 more reps. His reasoning was that since the shoulders were more slow-twitch muscle fiber dominate, it only made sense to work them after you fatigued to force them to grow. Then I was talking to the first Mr. Olympia, Larry Scott and he was telling me about training with Vince Gironda.  He mentioned how Vince Gironda had him perform tri-sets for his shoulder workout.

This is Larry Scott people, this is back when bodybuilding wasn’t filled with drugs. He mentioned that Gironda would have him before shoulder presses to single arm leaning shoulder presses to side raises.

If it was good for them then it’s good for me. Give it a try during your next shoulder workout.

The No Press Rule

Here’s another issue that I have with shoulder training. We’re too focused on performing shoulder presses that we literally break our shoulders down with very little size to show for it. I mean even if our posture was dumb perfect, we’d still be primarily stimulating our front delts. Like they don’t get enough work with all of our chest pressing already. If you want to get wide then you obviously see the value in side raises right? Well then why are you so obsessed with shoulder pressing? I know the strength community has us all confused and some of us think that the movements that allows us to use the heaviest weight is the best but it ain’t in this case. Just like heavy curls aren’t always the best for our arm training.

Rear Delts Are The New Side Delts

Damn that posture. Since most of us are stuck in front of this darn computer screen all day we now exhibit a shoulder rounded forward posture, not good for a shoulder workout made up of shoulder presses. As a result, our rear delts are more prominent from the side then ever before. So our rear delts take on more importance than ever before. We need to prioritize training them with different angles and with lighter weight.

Most people are so focused on slinging up heavy weight with various rear delt dumbbell exercises but that does nothing but overactivate the traps. Instead, why not actually focus on a shouler workout that actually works the rear delts with various cable movements and high rep schemes? Only makes sense right?

Click Here To Discover The Shoulder Training Secrets And 12 Week Workout Plan To Rapidly Add Width To Your Frame

In the pursuit for muscular arms, people do some pretty weird things. I mean take a look at most of the arm information that you see circulating online or in the magazines. You see all kinds of weird things being advocated and people will do anything, I mean anything, to build a set of impressive arms. From weight gainers, to wacky workouts to just weird advice, it all comes out when we talk about arm training. Most people just don’t have a clue as to what it takes to build an impressive set of arms.

Don’t overdo your sets and reps

In a recent conversation with the very first Mr.Olympia Larry Scott, we discussed arm training. After all he is well-known for having one of the best set of arms ever. Larry told me that at his peak he was only training his arm with 9 sets (9 for biceps and 9 for triceps) of around 6-8 reps. When he couldn’t complete more reps he’d do partial reps. That’s not like the traditional training methods that are used today. No more biceps and triceps blitzes that we see in the magazines everywhere. Less is more for your arm workout

Work with a wide variety of angles

Training at multiple angles has gotten wrecked in recent times due to strength coaches knocking pure bodybuilding training.  It’s not a good idea to waste your arm training time on perform various cable and machine angles. Don’t be obessed with hit your arms from every angle you can think of. Stay with basic movements that work your arms through a variety of angles. Think about this for a second. Just changing the height of the seat on the preacher bench substantially changes the stress on the biceps. So stick with your basic movements (dumbbell, barbell and preacher curls) and work through a wide variety of angles in your arm training.

Get real good at chin-ups and dips

Want big arms? Pick chin-ups and dips as your main movements. Focus on getting stronger, either more reps or more weight, every arm workout for six weeks. Most people lose sight of what a bodybuilding workout should look like. It’s not about the “pump”, it’s about increasing your muscle size and strength every arm training session. The only way to really change your body is to get stronger. So for four to six weeks you need to focus on using more reps or heavier weight each workout. Since chin-ups and dips allow you to use multiple muscles, in addition to your biceps and triceps, your entire upper body will get stronger and allow you to get stronger on your other arm training lifts.

So you get stronger in two movements then you get stronger in all the rest. You get stronger then you can do more reps at that given weight which leads to more growth.

Click here for more arm training tips and a 12 week arm training program