Ep. #101: Interview with Alberto Nunez on finding & fixing muscle imbalances

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Hey, this is Mike and welcome to another episode of the muscle for life podcast. In this episode, I interview a professional bodybuilder and coach named Alberto Nunez from the team 3dmj crew. He is the last on the roster, so I have now interviewed them all. And In this interview, we are going to talk about how to find and fix or how to spot and fix muscle imbalances in your physique.

I thought Alberto would be the perfect guy to talk to about this because he not only talks the talk, but he walks the walk. He lives this stuff. He’s an accomplished bodybuilder with an absolutely insane physique himself. And he and his team of coaches have also helped hundreds of other [00:04:00] bodybuilders build their best physiques ever and, make a career for themselves.

I’m also excited to put this interview up because it’s something I get asked about all the time from both guys and girls. So I’m sure there are quite a few of you out there that could also use some help in this regard. Now, as you’ll see, the whole topic of muscle imbalances is actually pretty simple and straightforward when explained correctly.

You really just have to understand that a handful of technical points and guidelines and then you know exactly what you have to do to balance out your physique left to right and front to back, which many people don’t necessarily think of. Oh, and I do have to warn you about one thing. Unfortunately, my audio is shit in this interview.

My good microphone decided to stop playing nice with the program that I used to record Skype interviews. And I didn’t know that until we went to go record the interview. So I figured, I have a, I have my only backup that I had was my webcams, terrible mic, but I figured it would be better to just do the interview and I’ll just try to speak as little as possible then not do it at all.

[00:05:00] I do try to talk, as little as I can. So you shouldn’t get too annoyed by it and it won’t happen again because now I have two good backups, but sorry about that. Anyways, that’s everything let’s get to the interview. Alberto, thanks for coming on the podcast. Finally, we our schedules, the stars have aligned and 

Alberto Nunez: we’re 

Mike Matthews: here.

Alberto Nunez: Yeah. We’ve been trying this for quite a while now. And as of today, we haven’t figured it out so far. I have my fingers crossed, but yeah, no, happy to be here. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. I’m happy to have you because the subject we’re talking about here, we put training, something that I get asked about fairly frequently, and it’s something I’ve written a little bit about it.

I haven’t, I don’t think I’ve ever really spoken about it much, at least I haven’t Dived into it like we’re going to do and I think you’re someone that you’re a perfect type of person to talk to us because You quite frankly have more experience with this than I do as a competitive bodybuilder working with competitive bodybuilders So i’m excited to learn a bit myself about how you go about it In with your body with the people that you train and so forth 

Alberto Nunez: Yeah, this is I think we’re going to get [00:06:00] into a few tangents with other strength athletes, but I think that’s a good place to start is just other strength athletes and how you can see that, not everyone grows exactly the same.

Mike Matthews: So maybe let’s start with defining what really when can you actually say, This is my weak point because I get a fair amount of people that reach out that have been lifting for, maybe three or six months, and they notice that their chest seems to be lagging, or it’s not as growing, not growing as quickly as their friends, or as quickly as they wanted it to, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that, oh, okay, fine. Let’s change everything. Let’s now train chess five days a week now, you 

know what I mean? 

Alberto Nunez: Yeah. The most practical route I feel when you first decide that I’m going to start training with weights is something probably very similar to a starting strength type of program. Most of us never take that route, obviously. We do all the things that are popular that, have been time proven by the big guys, right? Yeah. And we start [00:07:00] there and then we look back and we realize it. Oh, wow. There probably would have been a much more time efficient way to get here. 

Mike Matthews: That’s my story.

Six or seven years of bodybuilding, magazine type workouts without really analyzing what I was doing or why, or What I was really getting out of it. It was just a thing. I would do. You know what I 

Alberto Nunez: mean? Yeah. Yeah. You go with what the popular culture says is right.

And, at that point, you don’t really, you can’t distinguish what is right and what isn’t. And now when I do get my hands on a, just a fresh out the box, like 15, 16 year old, athlete that, maybe they’ve been lifting for two months and it’s been off and on.

It’s okay, you are about to be amazed because in a year we’re going to make an amount of progress that I feel had we not had this intervention, it probably would have taken you three years to get there. So yeah, I think initially hypothetically speaking, in theory, someone just fresh out the box, just green, you take them through something like that.

And almost right [00:08:00] away, or at least once the beginner phase is out the way, which happens quite quickly. That intermediate phase is just so long, but once we start poking into that phase, you’ll see that, oh, there’s certain body parts that grow really well, that you really can’t explain why your calves have gotten so much bigger, for some people just dead wrong spotting, 

Mike Matthews: right?

Alberto Nunez: But then there’ll be other body parts that where you’re like, man it’s like my arms have gotten bigger from all this pressing shoulders too. But my chest is just not keeping up with everything else. So I’d say right around the intermediate phase is a good place to start scouting around.

For what body parts are probably going to need a little bit of extra attention. And that’s probably a good time in place to perhaps start adding some isolation work. 

Mike Matthews: Would you agree that’s probably, I don’t know, I’d say between the eight months and 12 months more or something around there, or do you start looking at it?

Alberto Nunez: It was some people even faster. I can think of two situations [00:09:00] where I Were 15 or 17 years old somewhere in between there and within a year. We were dead lifting 500 pounds for reps That’s just because we did everything right? Yeah So no unnecessary wear and tear, very linear, whenever we thought we’d get stuck, we’d take a step back and regenerate things again.

But yeah, right around, yeah, I’d say six months to a year for most people. That’s about as long as the intermediate, the beginner phase will last. One thing you will notice is that with other strength athletes outside of Chiefly physique athletes, they like to consider themselves strength athletes, but they that’s what they are.

The physique athletes rather. When you look at Olympic lifters, for example you will see that their train probably looks very similar. I don’t think they spend too much time curling and doing lateral raises and such, via very similar movements, they all end up in different places.

This guy has some amazing shoulders and you’re like, I know you’re not. And, hitting your side delts four times a week or anything like that. Yeah. So it, that’s where [00:10:00] you can start to distinguish that, Oh, if you look at those sports and yeah, we can do the same movements, but people are going to respond somewhat differently.

But you also don’t want to make the mistake of, too early on focusing on something that you might think is a weak body part when in reality, actually, this is something that we should bring up is the fact that. As you’re going through your beginner phase, you’re still green, you’re still new, you just might not know how to actually use those areas of your body in the right manner.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I hear from a lot of people, like you probably have heard from, if you’ve worked with a lot of people brand new, heard from a lot of guys that were new to lifting in particular that, for example, had a hard time feeling like they were really engaging their chest through pressing. Or their back through pulling, like I’ve heard from quite a few guys that it took a good three or four months of working at it before they really actually felt their back muscles working, in a way that they would have expected to feel it as opposed to they would feel a lot in their biceps and they eventually, would feel fatigue in their back, but not the real, mind muscle connection, so to speak.

Alberto Nunez: [00:11:00] Yeah, absolutely. I think. We’re quick to want to add something and be proactive, but sometimes it’s Hey, let’s take a step back and let’s see if we can once again, brush up on, on these basics. And I think that’s very important. All other sports do it. When you look at some of the drills that, you know 10 year old baseball players doing, they’re very similar to what the guys in the majors do.

You still have to brush up on those things and make sure they stay sharp and sometimes reevaluate the way you do things. 

Mike Matthews: Okay, so you have somebody in the beginning. They’re working mainly on their compound lifts, depending on the program. There might be some isolation work in there.

So now they’re coming into this intermediate phase. What would you, now how would you, is this just by visual, you would say, okay let’s look at your physique and how are you pinpointing weak points? And then we can start talking about what do you do about it?

And then also, if you want to throw in any sort of mistakes, common mistakes that you see people making, once they get to that phase sure. It’s a common mistake in the beginning to, Okay. Veer too far away from the basics, like you were saying, but what are some of the things that people run into, [00:12:00] when it actually does start to make sense to, to look for adapting the training to your own body, 

Alberto Nunez: yeah. And we’ll assume that throughout the process, getting to this point where we’re like, okay. Our arms are stubborn that we’ve done, we’re doing our movements in the correct manner. We’re, when we’re growing, we’re using our back and we’re pressing, we’re using, we’re getting help from our chest, all that stuff.

So with all that in place yeah, the first place you would go to is definitely. What is missing? What seems to not be growing as well? And then, entering the intermediate phase, you’ll probably start off with something that’s pretty symmetrical across the board in regards to how we’re scattering the isolation work mostly.

You try that first. Maybe you weren’t doing farms more than once a week early on, right? Or not at all. 

Mike Matthews: Depending on Or not at 

Alberto Nunez: all. Yeah. Yeah. And now it’s gotten to the point where okay, it’s time to bring in all these isolation movements into play. You start off with something that’s pretty symmetrical, something pretty basic and [00:13:00] generic looking.

And 

Mike Matthews: so in the case of arms meeting, you might do an arm session every week that looks like some curling, some close grip pressing or push downs or something like that with moderately heavyweight, 

Alberto Nunez: something that looks pretty, pretty neutral and give that a go for a while. And since you are introducing new movements I do think it’s important to make sure that those movements are being done correctly.

I think one of the issues with isolation movements is that ideally, we’re moving one or in some movements, two joints at a time, but it’s very easy to get other joints involved. I think we, we’ve all seen it with lateral raises, with curls, where it’s very easy to get help from your ankles, your knees, your hips, your back.

So I guess that’s, it’s nice that in this case, we get to break it up into, we focus on our main lifts first, initially coming out of the gates. And now let’s bring in some new movements and learn to master these. You don’t want to be working on too many things at once.

So you try that master These movements give those a go for a [00:14:00] while And often what does happen is it a lot of those body parts that we assume to be just weak Just under trained. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, like I don’t know about you, but I see that with guys at least I see that a lot with shoulders My shoulders were always like stubborn my chest always just responded well to pretty much anything I did My biceps also, but I guess my arms in general.

So like my pressing and pulling have always been decent, but my shoulders have taken a ton of work, a lot of isolation work because, you can get real strong on your overhead press, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to have those side delts or those read delts that round it all out. 

Alberto Nunez: Yeah. Yeah.

And it’s one of those things now where I’m sure your training looks very not so symmetrical, like certain parts that you’re like, I don’t have to curl that much. I’ll be fine. But it was a process for 

Mike Matthews: six months just because I actually felt my biceps were getting too big and like my shoulders couldn’t, but that means I need more shoulders and my shoulders are just stubborn.

So I stopped curling and I just was, heavy pulling and that was enough to me. I didn’t lose any 

Alberto Nunez: arm size. And that’s one thing you do discover when you do break, [00:15:00] you get into that next phase where it’s okay, there’s only so much I can do within the training cycle, a training block. There are certain things that you have to put on the back burner a bit, but before we get to that, actually, so again we’re running at this point with just very symmetrical training, like a very generic upper, lower kind of split, right?

Right. 70 reps per body part or around there twice a week, everything is pretty much in line. And then you realize that, okay. Shoot. My shoulders don’t grow. Let’s up the dose. Basically the dose of stimulus and basic 

Mike Matthews: mechanism in play, right? It’s if you want to get, if you want your muscles to get bigger and stronger, you have to do more work and you have to, you can’t just go forever because you just be, you run yourself into the ground, but ultimately, you’re going to have to do more if you want that muscle, if what you’re doing right now is not getting it done and you’re eating right and so forth, is that kind of the basic.

If you just boil it down to a simple principle is we have to figure out how to do more on that muscle group. 

Alberto Nunez: Yeah, and I think initially, and especially with isolation movements, since they’re so [00:16:00] limited in regards to how much we can actually progress. 

We, we always talk about being progressive with our training.

I think the first thing that people think of is adding more weight to the bar. And for a press, for a deadlift, for a squat that’s a little bit easier to come by, but with Isolation movements. You might be curling the same way for the next two months. Yeah. Yeah. You’re going to have to be extra patient, but one thing when it comes to the increasing weight on those movements and often increasing weight too fast on isolation movements, as a recipe for disaster, for sure.

So what you end up doing is adding volume. That’s probably the most practical way. 

Mike Matthews: And just so everybody knows, we’re talking about adding reps, 

Alberto Nunez: adding reps or even sets. Maybe you were doing five sets of isolated media adult work. And you’re like let’s double this. 

Mike Matthews: Actually just, yeah, doing more reps, whether, however you break it up into sense, if you did 50 reps for that muscle group last week, you might do 60 this week or something like that.

Alberto Nunez: Yeah. So adding volume adding a rep here and there, [00:17:00] maybe a set here and there is probably the most. Practical way of improving those weak body parts, 

Mike Matthews: right? And have you found this is a question just from my experience. Have you found though that like I feel like I mean I progressed on Isolation exercises and just my like focusing on just progressive overload and getting stronger.

I feel like for quite a while I was able now it was harder Yeah, it’s I feel like it’s easier to gain five pounds in your deadlift than it is to gain five pounds on your curl You have to work a bit harder for it But I remember from over the course of several years, I remember when it used to be hard to curl 45s for sets of six to eight.

And now, again, I started curling again a little bit just cause I miss it, to be honest, but I’m not doing too much. But when I was like really going at it, I was up to maybe 70 or 75 for sets of four to six or so. So it took a while, I don’t know, that’s been my experience at least.

As opposed to just sticking in 50 and trying to go for unlimited reps, 

Alberto Nunez: yeah subjective progress on these movements is also a great way to go [00:18:00] about it. Maybe you just, you feel maybe a better contraction in those movements, whereas when you first made that jump to that next set of dumbbells, it was one of those things where you just didn’t feel it as much.

Yeah, and maybe now in your four sets of ten, you have a few more reps left in reserve, where it’s the first. Few times you barely made it there. So subjective progress I think is also a great way to go about it when it comes to those isolation movements. Speaking of just, the user experience, when you’re squatting, when you’re deadlifting, sometimes you’re just trying not to be crushed often, right?

You don’t necessarily always. feel these movements the way you would an isolation movement. And I think that’s something to definitely take into consideration that while load is a wonderful proxy for muscular tension with the isolation movements, sometimes jumping up an increment can mean there’s actually less tension, a place on the targeted muscle group.

So that’s always something that you have to remember when you’re trying to. Add some [00:19:00] weight or rep there is am I actually targeting this muscle group the way I intended to? 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And then that kind of goes back to that rep quality point that you’ve mentioned, where there’s just going through the motions, they may look, you have two versions of an exercise that look approximately the same, but they’re really not the same in terms of what’s going on physiologically.

Alberto Nunez: That mind muscle connection, which is starting to become more popular again. And I’m glad to see it make a comeback because I do feel it makes a huge difference. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. You can feel it immediately if it’s that difference of do you feel the muscle really working and you feel it contracting the way that, as forcefully as possible and so forth.

Or do you feel like your limbs are going through a motion that doesn’t involve your lats at all? For example, there’s, it just makes one of the things that’s it makes too much. Just common sense to, to be completely invalid. And the fact that it’s been kicking around in the bodybuilding world for decades now is probably evidence enough as well.

Alberto Nunez: Exactly. We have people 

Mike Matthews: dedicated their entire lives to figuring this kind of stuff out. Yeah. They may have not, [00:20:00] had it formalized and published in a journal and that’s been a lot of smart people that have put a lot of time and thought into this. 

Alberto Nunez: Yeah. And pretty soon here I think I heard Brett Contrares talk about they’re going to actually do some research where they compare.

Having experienced lifters do a movement while focusing on external cues versus internal cues. And I really, what I think is going to happen is it’s going to make a huge difference and it’s going to make an even bigger difference primarily when it comes to the isolation movements. Whereas I can understand, if you’re going to do a deadlift correctly, maybe external cues might break the floor or things like that might make more sense.

There’s really only one proper way of doing a deadlift, for that specific person, but curling, I guess there’s such a fine line when it comes to, making a small little tweak in the movement this way or that way can make all the difference. And sometimes, again, that makes problems disappear, like weak body parts.

become not so weak. I can think of my calves being one of those body parts where I, they’re still [00:21:00] not very good, but tweaking the form has been probably the biggest help in my calf development. Whereas like the training volume has honestly not changed in years, but they continue to improve because I do, I’m much more.

With that mind muscle connection when it comes to my calves, which was very hard for me. Oh, 

Mike Matthews: I want to hear that. Yeah. Genetically I had nothing in calves. Anything that I have has been like, I’ve had to work way too hard is how it feels for what I have. And I’m sure mine are worse than yours, but I’ll ask you after the podcast, what you did there.

So now let’s shift to, this is also something common that, I come across all the time. That’s very relevant. So you have people that. Really? Their goals are more along the lines of bodybuilding and that, yes, they want to be strong, but they want to have a certain look and they want to have there’s even, I think there’s probably some validity to quantifying it using, you fight where you take different measurements and using fee, the golden ratio, it gives you some ideas on how, why do you want your.

Your [00:22:00] shoulders, your comforts to being versus your waist and versus blah, blah, this, whatever. And so you have people that’s what kind of what, why they got into weight lifting on the aesthetic or visual side of things, but they’re training more like just doing powerlifting type of training and wondering why, because I’ve come wondering why, like why.

Are their legs and ass huge, but their upper, their shoulders haven’t really come in as much and their lats haven’t come in as much. Where, because those types of programs don’t involve much isolation work. And there’s a lot of information, like advice kicking around on the internet that, you don’t need to curl, like you should never do a curl.

All you got to do is, heavy deadlifts and you’re going to get 18 inch arms. And you never need to do a tricep pushdown, just OHP and bench press. That’s it. So I’m curious as to your thoughts on that and, just how do people, how should they be approaching their training in context of their actual goals?

Why, what are they trying to achieve? 

Alberto Nunez: I think if I go back maybe 10 years ago, the whole power building thing, weren’t very popular at all. [00:23:00] And I can’t explain to you how it came about, but eventually power building just became very popular. And then, obviously bodybuilders, especially those bodybuilders, it just, at this point, they’re willing to do anything to just get a little better, especially at the intermediate phase where, just showing up isn’t showing up and training hard, doesn’t bring the same results that, you know.

When you were first starting would bring, right? So they looked into what power lifters were doing and they had these really objective plans where this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to monitor all these variables. And when you think about it, it makes sense to approach your training in that way even if strength isn’t your main goal.

Bodybuilders have been doing this with their nutrition for years where they set up these plans, instead of frequency, volume and intensity, it’s fat. Carbs and protein and whenever they’re stuck in whichever direction, whether it be gaming or losing, they move a few things around and boom, plateaus over, we get to continually progress.

So obviously I [00:24:00] think power lifters, bodybuilders didn’t have much experience with creating their own templates that cater to their own needs. So they borrowed a lot from power lifters. And I think your first few goes at it. You’re going to make some great progress head to toe just because the novelty of the program, it’s organized.

You’re going to progress. So you’ll make some progress, but then eventually it gets to the point where it just becomes too specialized. And I remember jumping on that bandwagon myself, and I think maybe about six months into it. I was like, you know what? My shoulders just don’t look the same anymore. My arms are down, I think about half an inch.

So a lot of the things in the extremities, lats look a little bit different. I just didn’t have that full round bodybuilder look that I was used to, but I was much stronger. And now we a few years later, we understand that, yeah, these concepts are great and we can learn a lot from this, but if your main goal is to improve aesthetically, we’re going to have to move around some things and apply a lot of the things that powerlifters have been applying to the squat bench and [00:25:00] bed lift to our lats, to our hamstrings.

Just everything and being able to, at least for the most part, have a good understanding of what you can do should you get stuck. So I, honestly, we slowed down for a minute there, I feel like. We like No, 

Mike Matthews: it’s Point. I just don’t want to bring that up because I know I get asked about it.

And it’s where people, cause a lot of people, at least that I hear from, they get into weightlifting via program, like starting strength or strong, and then they do that for a bit and, I’ll get, I’ll just hear from people that then they’re not, they feel like their physique isn’t going in the direction that they want, but they’re happy with.

Things are much better and they’ve gotten a lot stronger and they’re happy with that. But, they can see that again with guys it’s usually lats lagging, shoulders lagging a lot of times chest as well, but lower body bigger than they. They feel like they made 70 percent of their progress in their lower body and like 30 percent of their progress in their upper body.

Arms are not what they want, so that’s why [00:26:00] I think it’s just a good quick little tangent. Because it is, it basically, they’re creating their own weak points in a sense. Because that’s not, those programs are for whole body strength. So you can press, pull, and squat. It’s not so you can have pretty delts or pretty lats or pretty biceps.

Alberto Nunez: Yeah and, I think, now we know. Now we know that, hey, that’s not enough. But there was a point in time where I was fooled that, basically, if I do a lot of the big compound movements, it’s going to take care of everything else. And that’s just certainly not the case.

I think I ran about five continuous They’re called Shiko or Shiko cycles. Depends on who you ask, but it was fun and it was quite an educational experience and I use it to this day when I program for my bodybuilding. It’s just that the work is obviously scattered a bit differently. Another tangent, actually, you will see a friend of mine, Lee Norton.

Maybe you look at his pictures prior to powerlifting, dude had some of the most ridiculous looking arms especially for a natural bodybuilder and he [00:27:00] found out he was really good at this powerlifter thing, focused on that for a few years and like what you described, you could see a few body parts were growing but then the other things got left behind.

So what can we take from these strength programs? Yeah, it’s just the fact that it’s important to control for the variables that, that we need to in order to have a solid resistance training program. And that’s going to be the volume, the frequency, the intensity, knowing where those things are at. And then again, scattering the volume in a way that makes sense based on your own personal goals.

Mike Matthews: Totally. And how might that look? Obviously this Is very personalized and something it’s hard to give a one size fits all it’s very easy Like in my work the programs that I basic programs I have for men and women It’s easy to give a program that has you squat deadlift press ohp Every week and adding some isolation work and then guys focus a little bit more on your upper body than your lower body with girls Vice versa and that’s good.

I think it’s a great place for anybody to start I kind of power bodybuilding [00:28:00] approach like you were saying or power building approach, but then Okay, so we’re at the point now where, in some cases, again I’ve also heard from quite a few people that didn’t need to do really anything else, not plugging my own stuff, but didn’t need anything really beyond a good basic strength program with some isolation accessory work tacked onto it, and they just had good genetics, and they didn’t get hurt, and they did everything right, And, look at them.

It’s hard to even find anything wrong with their physiques, but those aren’t, I would say those are the outliers at least to some degree. So how does it start? How does it work where you have somebody let’s assume they, they understand the fundamentals of strength training and they’ve gotten good at that.

But I guess we could break it down by gender. Even what have you seen in terms of, we can look at guys and girls separately. And just to address some of the common issues that I know the listeners, like some guy right now is sitting there going, my shoulders are too small. What do I do? My lats are too small.

What do I do? My chest or girls saying my butt isn’t the way that I want it to be, or my arms aren’t quite there, my legs and so forth. And how do you kind of program that? Or what would be some [00:29:00] examples? 

Alberto Nunez: Of course, initially just something basic. Let nature do its thing. You might get one of those freaks where it’s wow, we have done Minimal rowing, but you have a terrace major that like looks like my bicep, fine, you know that lucky you right?

But that’s usually not the case then you get to the intermediate phase where it’s okay now we really have to tack on some more volume and kind of just Scatter volume and all those body parts that won’t get as much love from the beginner phase And again, that’s going to look very generic very similar across the board and then you try that, you pro try to progress as much as you can with that for a while and then some body parts, hey, they actually come out and play and you’re like, ah, look at that, I actually have biceps now.

Now they’re doing more than just plenty of rowing. 

Mike Matthews: So in that case, just for example, you might have someone, let’s say they’re doing their Back proper. They’re doing their rowing They’re pulling on one day and then a few days later they’re doing in this case. It could be some curling for example 

Alberto Nunez: Maybe i’d say a good place to start [00:30:00] is twice a week frequency because that’s about where you will be Most of your training career, so hitting body parts twice a week.

Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: I would say they’re hitting body parts that you want to continue progressing on though. Like I’ve also heard from people or they’re, they say especially girls, they don’t want any more in a certain area of their body. Should they still be doing, if they don’t want, I’ve heard from, for example, swimmers that they, they don’t want more back.

So should they still be doing, should he train their back twice a week? No, it’s, yeah, I wouldn’t recommend that if you don’t, if you want, like you’re trying to just keep it the way it is, then, there’s no reason to just. Good, be a slave to, Oh, I should just be training everything twice a week.

Alberto Nunez: Yeah. Yeah. No if you identify a body part is highly gifted or highly unwanted for whatever reason. 

Right. 

Alberto Nunez: Like I, I don’t know if you guys, cause you know how calves are, both you and I know how calves are. Some people just have them. Some people don’t. Yeah. They don’t train calves because they can’t get their knee sleeves on.

Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: so I know a guy like that dude People come up to him in the gym guy [00:31:00] bodybuilder types Maybe guys and they’ll ask him how the fuck he got his calves because they’re ridiculous They’re straight bicep status calves and he’s never trained him once he’s I don’t know I was fat for a long time and that’s it.

That’s it 

Alberto Nunez: Walking on planet Earth, yeah. Yeah, so yeah, you can definitely trim off some volume, I’d say, in the intermediate phase, but I think what most people will find themselves doing is having to add more. Once you go with a program that’s pretty symmetrical, and then you’re like, shoot, still not working, let’s add more.

So you add more volume there, and where I think we start to do some things that might be counterintuitive. Is when we start to really just take away from the body parts that, okay, for sure, we know they grow well, it’s not a fluke, and that’s what I would call more of a specialization cycle, because there’s only so much of you to go around in regards to physical recovery, and even like mental recovery, you can’t, I’ve tried I’ve committed very short term to programs that did everything and that never works out.

Like 

Mike Matthews: [00:32:00] seven days a week, hour and a half a day, 

Alberto Nunez: Yeah, we have glutes are a big one where people do four different movements for glutes. And it’s yeah, don’t do that until you’re sure you have to get there. So the final step would be, and this is something that someone in the middle towards the late part of the intermediate phase.

You start to strip off volume from other body parts that just seem to grow no matter what. And it’s going to allow those other body parts to just are not progressing the way you’d like to, sneak in a little bit more progress. One thing you will find out though, is that those body parts that you don’t intend to grow, they have such a Especially for some people they have said they’re so sensitive to stimulus that they grow even better that whatever was I guess the textbook recommendation for say your biceps If anything was slowing down the rate at which they progress and you backed off a little bit and you’re like, wow Now they’re growing better because there’s such high responders to training.

It’s interesting. Yeah. I’ve had that happen, for example, with my quads, where I’ve continuously over the years I’ve been dropping the [00:33:00] volume, and there’s still the body part that grows at the most astonishing rate relative to everything else. But yeah, the last leg is probably that, and I think it’s hard for a lot of people.

To back off when it comes to the body parts that grow quite well, because it’s fun to train things that you’re really good at. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, 

Alberto Nunez: so 

Mike Matthews: totally. Okay. So then what are some what’s some examples of isolation exercises that you like to add for bringing up certain body parts? What are some good choices for the common stubborn body parts?

Alberto Nunez: You brought up gender specific issues. And I think one thing that happens often with women is that they don’t yearn to be As progressive when it comes to the resistance training. Whereas when you get a male trainee, if anything, if dude has jumped up 50 percent in his curls over the last 6 weeks, You’re gonna be like, I need to see those curls, because I don’t think they’re curls anymore.

With women it’s, I think, very important To make them hungry to progress, to get stronger. And [00:34:00] I think once they see just how well Progressive Overload works, they’ll be more hooked on that notion. And I think that’s one of, one of the main reasons that the barbell are glued to us. It’s a wonderful movement and it makes sense.

But I think one of the reasons that it’s become so popular and so many people swear by it is because here you have this very simple barbell movement, which is again, because it’s a barbell movement, it’s a lot more practical to continuously load over time. And you have these women, they just. I’m just anxious to progress and boom, you have body parts that, that improve.

So I think for women when addressing those weaker body parts that they perhaps don’t like the way they look, it’s important to really get them to buy into the hey, we need to progress because often even those body parts that they might be a bit confused as to why it looks that way.

They might think that. What we need to do is reduce it, but it’s often the answer is no. If we put some muscle there, it’s going to really help contour the area and you’d be surprised as to how much better it’s going to look even if we kept the state at about the same [00:35:00] body fat. 

Mike Matthews: Right.

Totally. And then of course there’s speaking of body fat, then once they see how the, once they see the real interaction between gaining muscle and really just body composition and see how that works, then they’re not afraid of getting bulky anymore because they know it’s all in their control.

If they are going to hang out around 20 percent body fat, then it’s going to be very hard to ever look bulky. It’s going to take a lot of work if they want to hang out around 25 or higher, then it’s going to be easier. At least it’s, they can make the choice. 

Alberto Nunez: Yes. I would say that for most drug free lifters and especially women, it’s going to be very hard to look bulky if you have your body fat under control.

Totally. If it’s bulky, it’s because it’s just a diet thing. Totally, 

Mike Matthews: totally. So we have the hip thrust for bringing up glutes. Any other specific isolation exercises that you like to use with women? Obviously, I don’t know how it’s been for you. The majority of women that I’ve heard from, they want to do something about, it’s usually lower body or more arms.

Those tend to be the two things. 

Alberto Nunez: Yeah, [00:36:00] and women tend to hold body fat typically in their limbs. You have to take them through a few fat loss phases to sell them on the notion that, Hey, it’s more about just dieting until it all looks right. 

Mike Matthews: Is there any other lower body type isolation exercises that you like to use with women?

Or is it mainly sticking to compounds and then just adding stuff for the glutes as needed? 

Alberto Nunez: Yeah, I think sticking to the compounds is where you go first, and if that doesn’t work, then perhaps, yeah, we might have to look into some sort of specialization type cycles and, back extensions with or rather hip extensions, but they look more they look more like back extensions on a 45 degree.

Bench, those are wonderful, glute thrust, things like that. But I think with women, the main thing is selling them on being progressive with movements. And again, it’s counterintuitive, it’s but my butt is like Why am I going to do, why am I going to lift weights because they automatically assume that it’s just going to inflate that area even further.

So glute thrusts have been wonderful, I think, [00:37:00] in regards to giving something, giving, giving them something to look forward to. Because it seems very proactive and then also because it’s quite easy to progress. And I think for anyone, even if their goal wasn’t to get stronger, once you get that feeling of being stronger, Who doesn’t want to be strong, right?

Yeah, that becomes 

Mike Matthews: part of the thrill. 

Alberto Nunez: Yeah. So with women, I definitely would say it’s more about just getting them to grind away. With men, if anything, especially with isolation movements in the body parts, in men tend to want more of, if anything, it’s like, Hey, I think we do better. We left our, our ego at the door and actually focused on curling correctly, tricep extensions correctly using our lats when we row that sort of stuff.

Mike Matthews: Totally. So to that point, what are some of the exercises you like to use with guys when you’re doing these specialization cycles? 

Alberto Nunez: I would say that the delt thing is actually quite common. And delt is almost one of those body parts where you can’t have enough of those.

I don’t hear [00:38:00] many hardly anyone’s ever complaining about how big their delts were and are and how they wish they would atrophy a bit. No. So teaching people to do lateral raises correctly, I think it’s a big one. What are the key points 

there? 

Alberto Nunez: Key points, I would say, for sure being extra patient with how you progress, I think, and again I’m a slightly different situation because I’ve been training for 15 years, 16 almost now, and so I’m very close to my ceiling, but this two year off season where it’s been focused on putting on muscle, I think, I’ve added maybe two and a half pounds to my lateral raise and and the six to eight rep range.

So it’s very slow. It’s very slow. And besides the fact that it’s really slow, I would say that a big thing for lateral raises is certainly, I think, holding it at the top because it’s a great way to ensure. That the muscles that, that you’re targeting is what got it here. If you were using your legs, if you were using your hips, et cetera, you won’t be able to hold it up for a second.

Yeah, [00:39:00] 

Mike Matthews: I’d say doing single like hanging where you’re, have you ever tried that? 

Alberto Nunez: I’ve tried single arm stuff 

Mike Matthews: and hanging as 

Alberto Nunez: well. I like it for people who don’t know how to contract that body part because what it does is shifts the focus even more so to just that one area. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. So I found it helpful for me just to take any swing out of it.

And I know actually I’m back to. To two arms now, but I was doing single for a while just cause I felt like I could progress faster on it. Again, it was slow progression, but, 

Just because I feel like the quality of the reps were better over time that just equal better progression.

Alberto Nunez: Yeah. Yeah. You can, I felt like 

Mike Matthews: I was almost getting artificially stuck at a lower weight. Just because I wasn’t coordinating my, my, my two arm raises properly. So I don’t know. I just, it’s something I tried and I was like Hey, this seems to be working a little better. I’m gonna do this for a bit. 

Alberto Nunez: And I know what you mean because, you weren’t training those [00:40:00] muscles as efficiently as you wanted to.

So they weren’t actually getting stronger. So you took a moment, took a step back, they get stronger and you’re like, Oh, wow, we’re back to where we were. And sometimes even beyond that, but yeah, for the lateral raise, I would say hold it at the top and then also a big one. But the way you do it is it makes it a little bit easier.

The hanging at an angle like that, is you don’t want to go all the way down, because the first few degrees, what that’s going to do is actually it’s your rotator working. So that’s why instinctively when we get tired on a lateral raise, we let them come down a little bit more, because we get that elasticity from the rotator, and it’s a lot easier to, bring them back up.

So I like to stop right about navel area, but the way you do them, it does that by default. So yeah, I’d say. Start with single arm, holds at the top, and be very patient with your progress. A lot of it will have to be subjective. Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: increasing rep quality, and then you can always, I’ve also liked, I don’t know if I’m sure you’ve done it, but I’ve found that like rest pause typesets have been very helpful with [00:41:00] shoulder training in particular.

Alberto Nunez: Time efficient too. Yeah. Very time efficient. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Okay, cool. So that’s shoulders. Have you found like with lats, for example, I heard from tons of guys, I myself, I feel like my lats took an inordinate amount of work to get to anywhere to where I felt like they were proportionate with my upper body ascent or with my, Chest and shoulders.

What are your favorite like isolation exercises for lats? 

Alberto Nunez: I think we’ll start with the basics there and I think basics and lats people think of pull ups But I think with pull ups most people tend to fall for those they tend to use those external cues like, Get to that bar. I much prefer, I rather prefer, I prefer a pull down.

I prefer a pull down. And one of a great quote that I took from one of my favorite strength coaches ever, Dan John, is that the lat pull down, that cable should never have to be replaced. Like it should never have to be replaced. And that’s something that these last few years I’ve taken with me. And it’s a very smooth controlled motion where I’m focusing on the [00:42:00] muscle groups that I’m trying to target with again, holds at.

The P contraction because it serves as a checkpoint that yeah, I got it here using the right muscles. Whereas if I didn’t 

Mike Matthews: Swing it somehow 

Alberto Nunez: exactly like it you’ll know if every time you pause and you hold it for two mississippi count you will see that okay I’m in the exact same position by the time you get to reps nine or ten 11 on a hard set of 8 to 12 You’ll see that you start to get out of position a little bit.

Yeah, and that’s where You know, you start to experience what I feel is actually true failure, which is technical failure. So yeah, I would say pull downs for sure and be, make love to the cable and with good holds at the end position. And the same kind of goes for horizontal rows as well as same thing.

If you can’t hold it at the end, then chances are it’s too much weight for you. 

Mike Matthews: And do you like to do both? Would you like to vary your grip? So like you’re doing let’s say your pull downs might be on a wider grip Your horizontal [00:43:00] might be on a more narrow if you found that to be helpful First or whatever I mean, or do you not change it at all?

Alberto Nunez: I think at some point I did until I found where that right place is for me And that will vary from person to person There’s certain places where maybe your biceps might be in a better line of pull. Yeah, and then they’re taking a bit more from your back than you would like. Yeah. So yeah, experiment with a few different grips.

Find the ones that work for you. The only reason I ever changed my grips is simply for the sake of avoiding wear and tear. But for the most part, once you have a movement down, you want to keep doing that movement so that you don’t have to change a movement and relearn something and then master that one.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Have you liked standing like lat pushdowns at all? An awkward stack exercise, we’re like you so so you’re up you’re going like this. 

Alberto Nunez: Oh, yeah. Yeah, it’s like a it’s like a pullover but with a cable. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Alberto Nunez: Yeah, so those are That movements gone so out of style in recent years.

Yeah, it’s such an [00:44:00] effect It’s it talked about that’s purely what the lap does. It’s just It’s all that 

Mike Matthews: I did those I did a ton of those when I was like When I was looking at pictures myself, I was like, oh, that’s too fucking small. I gotta do something So I was doing a lot of those in addition to pulling and rowing and so forth and it really helped I feel like that was probably one of the best exercises for just pure black stimulation 

Alberto Nunez: And talk about a great lat activation movement, it’s maybe a good way to, I’ve actually, I’ve used that movement to start my back days because it just it sets up that mind muscle connection, even if I fatigued it a little bit prior to doing maybe a bit more of the, compound movements where my biceps are working, it just, it sets me up for success the rest of the day, which is another, a great way to I think fine point that we forgot about when it comes to the specialization of certain body parts is to an extent, maybe they should go early on in your day.

It should be maybe the first thing you do. So maybe if you have tremendous quads, I don’t think in certain cases, it’d be out of order to start with [00:45:00] hamstring curls. Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: totally. Yeah. And that’s also one of the reasons why in the flip side with new people, why it’s smart to start with your heavy compounds that are going to give you the most bang for your buck, do those first when you have the most energy and when you’re also just mentally up to it as opposed to, Maybe exerting, maybe draining yourself by 30 percent doing other stuff.

And now you’re going to get to your heavy deadlifts. That’s just all around worse, but in this case, that’s a good point where you might want to come in and start on what the specific thing that you’re working on. And then, maybe your deadlift does is your second exercise, but there’s a reason for it.

Alberto Nunez: Yeah. It used to be just a big no for me to do that before I press. That’s how it goes. That’s how it goes. It’s I don’t care if my platform for pressing is a little fatiguing. My chest is okay. Relative to the situation in my back. So yeah, I think order of exercises is highly underrated.

Mike Matthews: Totally. Great. I think we’ve covered a lot. Is there anything else that’s floating around that you feel that needs to be [00:46:00] discussed on the whole thing? I think we talked about arms. It’s pretty straightforward. It’s are there any tricep exercises? I mean curling, you can do squats, you can bicep curl, you can dumbbell curl, you can hammer curl, you can cable curl, you can close grip pull up.

I don’t know. 

Alberto Nunez: Is there really anything else you can do? I’d say maybe for triceps, like being aware that you have a long head and it doesn’t get much love from the pressing. Getting some long head. Movements for the tricep there and what are like 

Mike Matthews: your two or three favorite 

Alberto Nunez: movements for that?

I like a simple just overhead single arm dumbbell that way, you know Both ac joints get to do their own thing you’ll notice that one elbow is shifted slightly differently and a lot of elbow pain actually comes from issues in your shoulders. I have found that to work quite well but yeah that’s probably the, when it comes to anything like arms and delts, those are probably the main movements is just lateral raises.

I don’t feel that big delts have ever outside of a few people have been built off pressing, they’re just making sure that humor stays where it needs to be. That, the dumbbell [00:47:00] curls, or just any curl variation of choice, making sure you don’t cheat, triceps, make sure you hit the long head.

But one final note, on these weak body parts, is that there was a lot of body parts that prior to me getting into really good shape at some point, I thought were weak body parts. And then, it’s funny, once you take off a layer of that fat, you’re like, oh, wow. My, my calves actually look okay when they’re lean.

And the same thing, I think, especially for women, it’s you’re not as bulky as you think. If you trim some of that body fat off, you’ll see that you actually look a lot better than you’re giving yourself credit for. 

Mike Matthews: And that’s, I actually found it typically true as shoulders as well. If you’re, cause they lose their identity when there’s too much bodies, I just becomes like your whole arm is just amorphous almost.

And then, you start getting down. As for as a guy, you start getting down to maybe around 10 percent or something around there. And all of a sudden, you can see that you can see your shoulder capping and you can see where it cuts in and there’s your bicep.

And all of a sudden your shoulders don’t look so bad anymore. 

Alberto Nunez: It’s funny. Cause it’s the same [00:48:00] thing we’ve been telling a lot of us, no trainers. We tell our female trainees Hey, it’s, if you get leaner, it’s going to look better. That’s really what it comes down to. But we see it all the time.

Yeah, same thing here when I’m in the off season, it’s I lose like my. Pecs and abs become one thing. 

Mike Matthews: Yep, 

Alberto Nunez: I get the 

Mike Matthews: same thing. Yeah. I get the same thing. My chest gets very round. The awesome chest is the flat squared, and I feel like I have to be so lean just to have a semblance of that, whereas, if I’m Just not I don’t even really get all I don’t have a i’m not a competitor So I don’t have an off season per se I try to stay fairly lean throughout the year But even that if i’m not shredded my chest just starts to round And it starts I don’t know.

We’re also our worst critics, of course, 

but 

Mike Matthews: That’s because we look at our Ourselves every day and just pick ourselves apart, but I know you’d be yeah, so Worth mentioning is, with legs and the ice applies both to men and women I think equally is I don’t know if [00:49:00] you’ve seen this but i’ve seen that a lot of people They do a lot of quad dominant work and they don’t do very much hamstring Specific work.

So they’ll do any they’ll be doing a lot of lunges a lot of squats and so forth And of course involve the hamstrings in your gym, right? But and that’s a bad, bad for your knees and bad Just especially if you’re an athlete sets you up for injuries and so forth but then I think also aesthetically there’s something to be said there that i’ve seen a lot of people with impressive quads but Their hamstrings, they don’t do hamstring curls they don’t do I mean I like rdls and hamstring curls are the two that I do the most of I’ve made that a point of inserted that into a lot of people’s stuff saying, I like the squats.

I like the front squats. I like all that, let’s add a hamstring exercise every week as well. Let’s make sure that your hamstrings are, at least we’re trying to balance between quad and hams. 

Alberto Nunez: Yeah. Yeah. And part of your hamstring curls, your leg up and some other muscle groups extend your hips.

So it’s important. Like the way you’re doing it where you have your Romanian deadlifts and then you have your hamstring curls and that’s truly a complete hamstring program, which, yeah, again, [00:50:00] I think there would probably be a listener or two, perhaps skips on certain body parts. And I know that for me, when I started, it was about the chest.

Like I wanted the chest and then I was like, Hey, you know what would go really well with the chest and shoulders. 

You start 

Alberto Nunez: to add things and then you’re like, you know what? When I turn around, I don’t look like I lift. Let me add something there. Eventually you’re going to want to train everything.

So if you’re listening and you’re not, it probably would be a good time. Especially those body parts that are not as popular. 

Mike Matthews: Absolutely. Okay, cool. I think that’s a pretty extensive. Cover just about everything that can be covered in a general kind of discussion on the topic. 

Alberto Nunez: Yeah, and hopefully the listeners got something out of that.

But yeah, I guess In a nutshell, I’d say just be patient, especially with your isolation work and that it is really important But also something it just takes time. It 

Mike Matthews: takes time and there’s a reason why if you really have found a weak point in your physique. There’s a reason [00:51:00] why it’s a weak point.

It’s because it’s a stubborn muscle. For me, my chest and biceps all, they grew quickly, but my, I’d say everywhere else in my body took quite, my quads were decently, they responded pretty well too, but everything else took quite a bit of work and that’s just the way it is. 

Alberto Nunez: Here we are, Mike, you and I, we still wear long socks, right?

That’s right, 

Mike Matthews: we’re, pants to the gym. Alright, so one of the last questions, where can people find you? Let’s see, you also obviously are a coach with 3D, with the team 3D Muscle Journey, so if you want to just give a quick plug on You, your work, when you have any projects that you are in the middle of, you want people to know about.

Alberto Nunez: Yeah. So 3d muscle journey. That’s my squad. That’s my team. 3dmusclejourney. com is a website. You can find us on YouTube as well. Team 3dmj and we have a podcast ourselves and it caters mostly to just contemporary bodybuilding issues and a few other. Just spontaneous topics that are pretty interesting from time to time.

You can find myself and the rest of the coaches on Instagram as [00:52:00] well. And those are the avenues in which we’re most active and we try to do a good job of mixing it up, having fun with our lifting, with our social media, but then also trying to be as informative and and also live the lifestyle.

I think we’re really sold on, we absolutely love this as much as I think anyone who’s listening to this podcast. And I do think it shows. 

Mike Matthews: That’s great. Awesome. So that’s everything. Thanks again for coming on to talk and you’re the last of the 3DMJ crew. I’ve interviewed you all now, so I know that I’ve been getting a lot of good feedback.

People really liked the interview, so I’m sure they’re really going to like this one as well. Also considering that it is something people have been asking for, here it is. Awesome. Thank 

Alberto Nunez: you. My 

Mike Matthews: pleasure. I 

Alberto Nunez: really 

Mike Matthews: enjoyed it. Yeah. Thanks again. Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe.

I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www dot muscle for life. com. where you’ll [00:53:00] find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you’ll also find a bunch of different articles that I’ve written.

I release a new one almost every day. Actually I release four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at muscle for life. com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.