Q & A with Christian Thibaudeau
Precision Nutrition: Hey Christian, what are you up to?
PN: He thinks his athlete got robbed?
CT: Well, he thought so. She’s a figure athlete and placed 4th out of 12 or something like that. He thought she should have placed higher as she had more definition than some of the other girls who placed ahead of her. He thought she should be in the top three – even first or second. He thinks that maybe because the other girls were friendlier with the judges, his athlete was placed lower.
PN: Have you ever experienced that yourself? People in bodybuilding – more than other sports – seem to think there’s a lot of politics involved.
CT: Well, I think there are some politics there – especially on the women’s side of things, because the judging criteria are always changing. Some years the judges choose more muscular girls, other years more “feminine” girls. Some years “softer” women are chosen and some years “leaner” women are chosen. And when the standards are always changing, any judging decision can be justified. So specific judges could play favorites for sure, and get away with it.
So yes, I do see more politics on the female level. But there’s a bit of it on the men’s side too. The bodybuilding federations are interested in the growth of the sport and, by extension, more money. So they’ll often want to see certain people win, people who can make the sport more marketable or popular.
For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger won a few Mr. Olympia titles that perhaps he shouldn’t have. But of course, he was a charismatic guy and his victories were always good for the sport. So I believe some politics were involved in those decisions.
PN: Speaking of bodybuilding, you’re now training bodybuilders and even competing yourself. You’re also a former competitive Olympic lifter. Has it been hard for you to shift from an objective standard – you lift the weight or you don’t – to these more subjective standards?
CT: Personally, it doesn’t make a difference to me. I’m mostly in this for the fun of it and for changing my body. For me, winning or losing doesn’t really matter all that much. But I know how it is. I’ve been involved in subjective sports before. In fact, I’ve trained a lot of figure skaters, and there’s no sport more subjective than figure skating. So I’ve coached and participated in both types of events, and I understand the frustrations involved in subjective assessments. In Olympic weight lifting, there’s no subjectivity. You either lift the weight or you don’t. It’s clean. Cut and dry. Subjective sports are so different and leave a lot of room for argument and even error. So I look at subjective events less as “sport” and more as “competition.” But really I enjoy both, they both offer something to me as an athlete.
PN: Tell me a little about your last book, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Interesting title.
PN: Really? Given the excellent quality of your previous work, I’d say that’s saying something.
So that’s his side of the book. My side is the training side, and this book goes into much more depth than the Black Book of Training Secrets. It’s more scientific and really explains the process of muscle growth. It talks about what’s going on in your body to make your muscles bigger. And it also covers what you can do in the gym to stimulate those changes. In that regard, it’s much more thorough than anything I’ve ever written about hypertrophy.
PN: I know you’re a busy guy and always have a bunch of new projects on the go. Tell me something about what’s coming up next?
CT: The book I’ve almost completed is a body transformation book in written in French, so it’ll be sold in Quebec and in France. I have a lot of contacts in both places, and I work with many French bodybuilders as well, so this is a fun project for me to work on.
But I’m also working on a series of books I hope to finish next year all about body part training, and I think they’ll eventually be my most popular books. They’re kind of like what Charles Poliquin did with his arm training book, but I’ll have a different book for each segment of the body.
The first book is going to be about arm training, biceps, triceps, and forearms. The second will be about torso training, chest and back. The third will be about leg training, and the last one will be about training shoulders.
These books are more practical than theoretical. They’ll have two or three chapters on the science of hypertrophy, and there will be a couple of chapters about the muscles specifically and the role of each muscle in the segment you want to train. But the meat of the book will be the specialized programs – there will be about 20 or so – and readers will be able to chose the programs best suited to their level of development, body type, and goals. So they’ll be very thorough, and very practical.
PN: That’s interesting – if most of your work is still with athletes, why have you shifted your writing toward bodybuilding? It seems like lately a lot of your writing is moving in that direction and you’re working with more and more bodybuilders through your coaching. What prompted that change?
CT: Well, to be honest, personally I’ve always liked bodybuilding more than performance training. Even when I was a football player, I always did more arm training than anyone else on the team, just to look good in my jersey. [Laughs.] And even before football training, I was using the old Weider plastic barbell set to build my body for aesthetics. I’d even pump up before school in the morning because of course you can’t go to school without being pumped up. [Laughs.] And then I’d train during lunch. And when I got back from school I would be training again. And I always liked muscular bodies. But even training three times a day, I never built the body I wanted. And even after over a year of training, I was what you would call “skinny fat.” And I kind of gave up on my goals of having a lean aesthetic body.
But the thing was that, even though I was training 3x per day, I wasn’t eating well. I would eat chips and candy bars, I would eat pastries, I would skip meals. It was a mess. So with all that exercise, I got maybe 2,000 calories all day long, and most of that was junk. [Laughs.] So it’s no surprise that I didn’t look good. No amount of training could make up for my diet. But rather than learn about and improve my nutrition, I was stupid. I just blamed my genetics and assumed I was just built for strength and not muscle size. So I decided to concentrate on training for strength. And after some success in Olympic weightlifting, I became pretty strong.
It wasn’t until after an injury to my biceps retired me from that sport, that I decided to learn how to diet properly. And when I did, I built a pretty decent body. Funny how that works. [Laughs.] It takes both good training and good diet to build a great body. So after seeing that my body had some potential, I decided to learn all I could about training and nutrition for aesthetics. And that’s what I’m teaching now.
PN: Okay, let’s go the next step from being lean and muscular to actually stepping on stage and competing. When someone wants to make that step, how does their training have to change? Or does it?
CT: Training probably shouldn’t change too much when leading up to a contest. I think the biggest mistake that most people make is that they change their training drastically leading up to a show. I actually made that mistake myself leading up to my first competition. I figured I had to up the volume, do more drop sets, do more reps, things like that. But the body actually has a reduced capacity to recover from training when dieting down with lower calories and carbs. So that needs to be taken into account.
I think your volume should actually go down when you’re getting ready for the stage. But, then again, if you decrease volume and intensity, then you’re going to lose muscle mass, no question. So I think the first priority is to maintain or gain strength, that’s the best way to stop muscle loss during a dieting period.
Now, let’s be clear on one thing. When we’re talking about serious bodybuilding, there’s a big difference between looking “jacked” and training for the stage. If you just want to look good naked, during the off-season you can train all muscle groups the same way. But when you really want to be competitive on stage, your training needs to correct weaknesses, or at least hide them. If any body part is lagging, you have to focus on making it bigger and in proportion to the rest of your body.
So the biggest difference between serious bodybuilding and just training for looks is emphasizing what the judges what to see and being able to identify your own weaknesses and work on them. And these things should be considered year-round.
PN: How do you identify your own weaknesses? Do you write your own training and nutrition programs or do you have other people help you?
CT: I write my own training programs with the help of a friend, who’s also a bodybuilding coach. He doesn’t tell me what exercises to do, but he does tell me what parts of my body to work on – whether I need more deltoid mass, or lower lat size, or whatever. Then I take that advice, and I select the exercises I think will best work on these areas. Because I don’t think you can be 100% objective with yourself, you’ll end up focusing more on what you want than what you really need. So you need an external eye keeping you honest.
Now that’s training. But when it comes to nutrition – you cannot do your own nutrition plan! [Laughs.] You will always freak out as the contest approaches. You’ll look at yourself in the mirror and start fearing that you’re not lean enough or big enough or whatever. And then you’ll cut calories or carbs or make some dumb decisions and ruin your physique progress. You step on stage, place poorer than you should have, and then all that time you spent is out the window and you have to start again. So ideally you shouldn’t be your own coach for something like this. It’s possible, you can be your own coach and get decent results, but you’re unlikely to get peak results without someone else helping along the way.
PN: Now that you’re both a coach and a bodybuilder, how do the two affect each other? Does being a good coach make you a better bodybuilder or does being a good bodybuilder make you a better coach?
CT: Being a good bodybuilder makes me a better coach. But I think that being a good coach actually hurts me as a bodybuilder. I think that sometimes being a good coach, having a good reputation, and getting good results tends to make me believe my own crap, you know? [Laughs.] I start thinking I don’t need to go look for outside help. And that leads to mistakes and problems. So I always remind myself to keep an open mind.
But I think that on the other hand, competing, stepping on stage, feeling the pains of preparation, all that stuff, that’s helped me with my athletes. Some athletes have eating disorders, some athletes have to make weight for their sport, some athletes are stressed about competition. And my own preparation helps me understand what they’re going through.
For example, when you’re on stage or during the period leading up to it, you look fantastic. You’re lean, there’s no fat. You look the way you always wanted to look. But of course, there’s no way to hold onto that year round. So after the contest is over, you gain fat and pretty soon you start to dislike your body, and that can be really hard. And I think that’s similar to a figure skater who thinks she’s fat even though she’s only 90 pounds. So you start to identify with what causes eating disorders and body image problems in young athletes – especially females.
PN: You mentioned that sometimes coaches need to keep an open mind and look for outside help when needed. What else makes a great coach?
CT: A great coach is someone who’s not self-centered, someone who doesn’t think that one piece of advice is the only way to go. It’s interesting to me that many complaints I receive are based on my advice changing over the years. Sometimes I hear things like, “That program is different than the one you wrote 2 years ago!” Or, “What’s with the carbs? You used to recommend low carbs!” But, I think those changes highlight my strength, which is keeping an open mind. And I think most coaches should strive for that. We have to understand that we don’t always have all the answers. So if I read a book or article by a coach, like say Chad Waterbury, someone with different methodologies, I’m looking to learn something. I like to try out what they say. And if it works, I try to incorporate it into what I do. So I think a great coach is open to changes, is always learning, and is willing to adapt his methods in order to get the most out of his athletes.
Take a sport like football, for example. The difference between the good football coaches and the great football coaches is this: the great coach builds his offensive or defensive system around the athletes that he has. So if a great coach has a great running back and a mediocre quarterback, he won’t use a run and shoot offence, he’ll use a ground-based attack.
Well the same is true with training. You have to work with the athlete’s strengths and weaknesses. So as a coach, you need to understand what your athletes need, and train them accordingly. Your long limbed athletes will have to train differently than your short limbed. Your ectomorphs need to eat differently than your endomorphs. There are all kinds of differences. So the great coach quickly assesses the needs of the athlete as an individual and changes his program accordingly.
PN: Over your career you’ve worked with a large spectrum of clients and athletes and have probably observed certain characteristics that most successful athletes share. What do you see as the common denominator between those who succeed and those who don’t?
CT: Cockiness. I think the common factor is that those who succeed, whether it’s in bodybuilding or sport, are very self-confident. But it’s a very strong self-confidence, it’s unshakeable. And it’s not really arrogance. Successful individuals are just very confident that they’ll succeed. Like in football, the cockiest guys on the field are the defensive backs. They have to be, because even if they’re burned for a long touchdown pass, they have to come back on the field with the same confidence they had before. That’s the mindset that most top athletes have. Nice guys are fine and well as teammates, but if you want to reach the top, you have to believe that you’re never going to fail.
A lot of strength coaches base their information and methods on the Russian literature. Others will base it on what they learned in college. Others on some coach they’ve interned with. Me, I’ve accumulated knowledge by learning from everyone. Everyone can teach you something about training. Even the smallest guy in the gym may have some method that can be used successfully. This is where keeping an open mind comes into play. But beyond that, I think you have to read everything you can get your hands on. And if you learn only one new thing in a book, that’s one more thing that you knew yesterday, so the book was worth reading. You do have to be able to understand what’s going to work and what’s not, so that means developing your critical thinking skills. But reading helps with that too. So as a coach, or even as an athlete, you can never stop learning and can never be satisfied with your current level of knowledge.
One thing that always impressed me about the Soviet system was that they also trained their athletes to be coaches, even while they were still just athletes. After coaching sessions, they got physiology lessons, periodization lessons, biomechanics lessons, this great education. So they learned about why they were doing what they were doing, why they were training so hard, and more. And they learned about the differences and similarities between theory and application. Well, no surprise, those athletes made great coaches because while they were building their bodies, they were learning the fundamental knowledge that training is built upon. So anyone with coaching aspirations should do the same.
