.John Winter was born in Yorkshire, England in 1935 and by the age of 16 started lifting weights to boost his size and strength as well as improve his appearance. He progressed rapidly and began entering physique competitions. He always thought that the legendary Reg Park looked awesome and possessed a physique to aspire to. John did well, winning several regional titles and a 2nd placing in Mr North-East Britain in 1958. He combined heavy weight training with a gruelling job as a bricklayer. He then got married, emigrated to Western Australia , had 3 children and had to ease himself away from the gym. He did, however, keep himself in excellent shape and retained much of his hard earned muscle for many years. To this day, at 81 years of age, he still has the appearance of a much younger man.

John’s first son Craig always ogled at the size of his father’s chest and biceps and was amazed how he could wiggle his huge pecs and pretend to puff up his baseball-like biceps by blowing into his thumb. His calves were always a sight to behold resembling two massive cuttlefish skeletons shoved under the skin of the back of his lower legs. Craig would spend hours looking at his father’s old bodybuilding photographs and muscle magazines. Besides his father, his obvious idols as a young boy were bodybuilding greats like Frank Zane, Chris Dickerson, Tony Pearson and of course Arnold Schwartzenegger. Craig began his obsession with the iron game at 18 years of age with his father John giving him his first programme. Within the first year of training he began to notice changes particularly in terms of added shoulder width, a wider back and bigger arms. His friends also noticed these gains and started training themselves which created a great atmosphere in the local gym. The environment was both competitive and fun and this spurred Craig on even more. Gains continued to happen with hard training combined with constant improvements to his nutrition. Leg training was always the hardest but eventually proved to be one of his strongest bodyparts.

Craig continued to train over the following years, enjoying both the stress relief of working out as well as the gradual improvements to his physique. The gym proved to be a salvation for Craig, an excellent diversion from his demanding daytime profession as a high school mathematics teacher. He always wanted to compete in a bodybuilding contest and follow in his father’s footsteps. The only stumbling block for Craig was the fact that at the time the only contests on offer were not drug tested and he did not want to dabble in the use of anabolic steroids.

As luck would have it, in 1994 Perth held its first natural physique competition with both urine and polygraph tests used to create a level playing field. So at 29 years of age Craig entered this contest and tied 1st place in a quality novice men’s line-up. Craig enjoyed the experience immensely and was bitten by the competitive bug. He then continued competing all the way through his thirties with several wins and top three placings at state and national level.

They say 40 years of age is the old 30. Well this proved to be the case for Craig. The year he turned 40 ended up yielding his best condition. He won both the state and national masters titles in the INBA and ANB federations as well as the overall Mr Western Australia . He then followed on from this with 3 more state titles, 2 more national titles and a swag of top 3 placings in contests that were not drug tested.

So now in 2016, at 51 years young, Craig is still very determined to try and beat last year’s model and achieve his career best condition. But until ‘father time’ catches up with him he will still continue to do battle with the iron on a daily basis. The benefits are far reaching even if you remove the physique contests from the equation. The sense of well-being, boosted meatabolism, lower bodyfat, anti-aging, increased bone density, joint stability and support, stress relief via endorphin and adrenalin release and finally the old adage “look good, feel good, am good”.

Craig has always firmly believed that the pay-off for just 1 hour a day in the gym is certainly worth the effort.

I am currently carrying a stubborn knee niggle and training around it with some ‘knee friendly’ leg exercises.
Here is my current leg workout…

1. Stiff-legged deadlifts
   2. Cybex Lying Leg curls
   3. Wide stance Sumo-squats to parallel
   4. Mid-range leg extensions (no lockout) with a unilateral drop set
   5. Technogym calf presses
   6. Seated calf raises

Doing hamstrings first is a terrific warm up for the knee joints.
Even when squatting I make sure there is no lock out so as to keep the load on the quadriceps muscles and away from the joints.

I also focus on deliberate 3-4 second negatives.

Definitely worth a try if your knees are troubling you at the moment!

CW’s Training Tip #3!…

“Got Forearms??”

I remember when I first started training with weights, many moons ago, I was frequently getting intensely annoying forearm niggles and injuries.

Of course, back in the early 1980’s, no one was training forearms directly and were only interested in training (and overtraining) their biceps.

About a decade later I decided to train them directly with three basic exercises, the reverse barbell curl or dumbbell hammer curl and seated wrists curls.

Not only did my forearms quickly grow in size and become notably stronger, but my upper arms (via the brachialis) looked more impressive too. The most significant improvement, however, was that with the improved development the injuries started to go away.

I usually work my forearms straight after my biceps.

2-3 sets of Barbell Reverse Curls (or Dumbbell Hammer Curls) to hit the brachioradialis followed by 2 sets of seated wrist curls (palms facing up to hit the forearm flexors) is all you need.

Worth a shot…you will be pleased with the results!!

I always like to train triceps after either deltoids or biceps.

This way the elbow joints have been sufficiently warmed up but you haven’t completely fatigued the tricep muscles like you would after training chest.

Also, if you do overhead tricep extensions or skull crushers (and if you don’t, then you should!!) make sure you do this exercise after a tricep pressing movement like dips or pushdowns.

And finally, I see a lot of people performing tricep exercises very fast with snappy, bouncing motions from the negative to the positive part of the movement.

Always try to do a 3-4 second eccentric motion followed by a focused contraction of the muscle at the end of the concentric part of the exercise.

This way the gains will come, but at the same time, you will preserve those precious elbow joints!

“Mass on the Back”

Here is a great back workout for you to try:

1. Underhand grip barbell bent rows

2. Seated close grip cable rows

3. Close grip chins

4. Wide grip front pulldowns

5. Dumbbell rear delt raises

6. Dumbbell shrugs

As 8 time Mr Olympia Lee Haney once said…

“If you wanna great back, then ya gotta ROW!!!”

As you can see this workout starts with the rowing which is probably the most gruelling aspect and the biggest compound movements listed.

Rowing, when performing correctly, will target not only the middle back and trapezius, but will also hit the lower lats all the way down into their insertions near your hips. And this is an area that seems to be lacking in many physiques these days as not many people enjoy performing bent rows, which as I mentioned before are hard work and similar to that of deadlifts and squats.

Rear delts and traps IMHO are muscles that are more akin to the back in that they are used to pull rather than push, hence why I like to train them in this workout and not on shoulders day.

Give it a go, you will be surprised how sore you will be over your entire back musculature in the days to follow.

Oh and don’t forget to stretch after cranking out this workout!