“Never Again! The Wild Workout I Thought I’d Never Survive”

“My Absolute Insanity — Courtesy of an Annoying Fellow Gym Rat” Erich Blancaflor 31, 5’8, 215 pounds, Vancouver, WA 2004 Emerald Cup, overall champ; 2007 Junior Nationals, 2nd light-heavyweight; 2007 USAs, 7th light-heavyweight

If you don’t know much about bodybuilding in general or competitive bodybuilders in particular, it’s a common mistake to believe that great-looking and chiseled abs are the result of hard work and countless reps for the midsection. Not so. Truth be told, most top bodybuilders don’t train their abs much at all, let alone indulge in long midsection workouts of maximum intensity. Of course, there are a few who give their ab training the “old college try.” After all, abs are one bodypart you can always improve, even if you were lucky enough to be born with a natural six-pack.

Erich Blancaflor can’t remember a time when he didn’t possess thick, well-defined abs. He’s not exactly one of the genetically fortunate guys who, although they don’t train abs at all, still have a magical midsection. However, he needs only to relegate the assault on his abs to precontest stretches of 12 weeks at a time to show what he’s got to advantage.

It’s then that he makes a point of scheduling abs with back training, which, because he’s far from being a slacker, is itself not for the faint of heart. It’s a workout grueling enough to make him mindful to always save sufficient energy after finishing back to do his six-pack justice. At least that’s the theory — it doesn’t always pan out that way in practice. After blasting through a variety of rows, chins, pulldowns, etc., he finishes torturing his back with heavy deadlifts. Given that amount of heavy back work, not surprisingly his abs workout has quite often ended up more in his head than in its execution. Lack of time or energy had him leaving the gym without doing a single crunch. There was, however, one occasion when, goaded on by an annoying fellow member, he pushed through fatigue and common sense to do the back/ab workout of a lifetime.

Erich elaborates: “During my prep for the 2007 USAs I’d missed a few ab-training sessions in a row and my slack began to bug me. I knew I had to play catch-up, big time. Trouble was, that day I really didn’t have much of anything left in the tank by the time I got to deadlifts, let alone to follow through with ab work. I didn’t want to start with abs either because I needed my energy level at its highest for the grueling back workout. So, out of necessity, I decided to do both at the same time by alternating abs with deadlifts in the same set.
“There’s a certain guy at my gym who has great abs. Well, he doesn’t really have great abs, but he’s got nothing else so his abs appear great by comparison. I tagged him Mr. Annoyance because he repeatedly pulls up his shirt and shows his six-pack to remind me I’ve skipped ab training. You know the type. There’s at least one annoying guy in every gym. He’s like a weed that keeps growing back!”

For the final exercise in Erich’s back routine he does five sets of deadlifts, pyramiding through 225-315-405-495 pounds. He finishes with 495 for two sets of 10–12 reps. Tough going. That’s not coasting home — it’s more like walking uphill backward in two feet of heavy snow. “Though tired, I was training more intensely than usual,” Erich relates. “Nevertheless, I had limited time and still wanted to get abs done. Seeing my stress, Mr. Annoyance was quick to predict I’d skip abs again as I’d done on previous weeks after deadlifts. So, hackles up and teeth clenched, I decided to dig in. For the first time ever I started incorporating sets of abs between my regular deadlifts. After my first set of deads with 225, I immediately did a tri-set of reverse crunches on an ab board, crunches and hanging leg raises. I did 15 reps of each with no rest between movements before rushing back to the deadlift bar and adding another plate to each side.

NEXT: The final exercise in Erich’s back routine.

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