Chris Bumstead knows a thing or two about building muscle. Beginning with a win at the 2019 Classic Physique Olympia, Bumstead’s reign over the division has made him the most recognizable active physique athlete in the world.
- Bumstead has amassed a 25-million-follower army on social media and is, in many ways, the de facto cultural tastemaker for younger generations of recreational bodybuilders.
Bumstead formally announced his retirement from Classic Physique on stage following his win at the 2024 Olympia (though he did decide to play an encore in the Men’s Open category before hanging up his posing trunks).
From successful supplement lines to part ownership of Gymshark, we’re pretty sure Bumstead ain’t going anywhere. We’ll miss him on stage regardless, so here are six bits of bodybuilding advice that helped Chris Bumstead set the standard.
6 Bodybuilding Tips From Chris Bumstead
Bumstead is the closest thing bodybuilding has to a thought leader — what he says, goes. However, you’re more likely to find “CBum” going deep on philosophy and psychology than training techniques most of the time.
Luckily, Bumstead’s training vlogs on YouTube are packed full of muscle-making wisdom. These six tips — one for each win at the Classic Physique Olympia — are some of his best advice:
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1. Training Frequency
It’s only right that we kick off with something from 2019 when Bumstead bagged his first victory at the Olympia. A few short weeks after that win, Bumstead took to YouTube to explain the rationale behind his training split.
- “It’s become popular in the fitness community, even at the elite level,” Bumstead said about the now-famous push-pull-legs workout split. “Studies are showing that the most optimal way to train a body part is more than once per week.”
He’s right. Research conducted by industry-leading clinician Dr. Brad Schoenfeld lends support to increasing your workout frequency: “Muscle groups should be trained at least twice a week to maximize muscle growth…” (1)
Bumstead’s push-pull-legs split allowed him to cover his bases from top to bottom. If you’re still stuck on a once-weekly workout regime and your gains have slowed or stalled, it might be time to dial things up.
2. Triceps Exercises
On stage, you can spot Bumstead by his…well, everything. Despite injuries and setbacks, Bumstead boasts some of the most impressive arms in the Classic Physique division. When it comes to optimizing an arm workout, exercise selection is everything. Here’s Bumstead in 2023:
- “I’ve started my last three arm workouts with a superset of rope pushdowns and overhead extensions,” Bumstead remarked.
For CBum, this pairing is a great way to warm up the elbows ahead of other, heavier exercises. He also touched on the unique potency of the overhead triceps extension. One scientific study even observed almost 40% more triceps growth from performing overhead extensions compared to pushdowns. (2)
Whether you’re looking to beef up your arms or want to avoid a painful day in the weight room, warming up your elbows is a wise move — overhead triceps extensions guarantee you’ll squeeze every morsel or muscle growth out along the way.
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3. Joint Health & Recovery
Bodybuilders beat themselves to a pulp in the gym as their full-time job; for Bumstead, a career in the weight room came with a cost. He’s accrued and managed a number of injuries over the years, and in 2022, he dropped a pearl of wisdom about joint health:
- “Rest does not help your joints,” Bumstead said. “It just makes you tighten up even more.”
Joint pain is tricky to manage and can vary in pathology from person to person. That said, Bumstead’s general observations here are on the mark. Locomotion, or low-intensity movement, increases blood flow, promotes joint lubrication, and can help with general physical resilience compared to bed rest. (3)
Active recovery methods such as walking and swimming aren’t just for fat loss phases or functional fitness athletes. Bodybuilders stand to benefit as well — as the saying goes, motion is lotion.
4. Tempo
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and there’s more than one pathway to the bodybuilding podium. Mass monster Dorian Yates won the Mr. Olympia six times in a row off the back of his heavy-duty “blood and guts” training style.
Bumstead, by contrast, takes things slow and steady, both in contest prep and when he’s got a dumbbell in his hands. For the 2024 Olympia, Bumstead recruited performance specialist Justin King. Here’s King:
- “That’s the ticket, the time under tension during the eccentric,” he replied when Bumstead asked about the single most influential factor in bodybuilding training. “You create more muscle damage and eccentrics are also one of the fastest ways to build strength.”
You can see this philosophy embodied in how Bumstead hits the weights; he’s slow, composed, and controlled from start to finish. Lifting in such a way allows CBum to get more value out of lighter loads if he wants to, while also guaranteeing he’s built stability and control to go heavy without risking injury.
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5. Range of Motion
In the early fall of 2024, Bumstead renewed his partnership with athleticwear juggernaut Gymshark. As part of the rollout, CBum dropped a back workout exclusively for Gymshark, which contained some sage advice about range of motion in bodybuilding training:
- “We’re going to be going for a lighter weight, huge range of motion this year,” CBum says. “We’re elongating the muscles by doing some full range of motion training.”
Elongating muscles is one thing, but Bumstead’s philosophy on range of motion is good advice no matter what stage of your bodybuilding career you’re in. According to emergent research, muscles are more responsive to hypertrophy when they’re stretched out and placed under tremendous amounts of mechanical tension. (4)
6. Squats
You won’t catch Bumstead camped out in the squat rack for a leg workout — at least, not anymore. In his early years, it was a different story. During an interview when he was just 21 years old, CBum touched on the potency of squatting for leg development:
- “The one thing that I can say that contributed the most to my overall leg development would have to be squatting constantly and squatting heavy,” Bumstead replied to a question about his quadriceps development.
Sure, a career of heavy squats can take its toll in some cases. This sentiment isn’t exclusive to Bumstead, though. All-time greats Ronnie Coleman and Jay Cutler both endorsed heavy squats as the ultimate quad-building exercise.
On the evidence-based side of things, heavy squats have been shown to activate more muscle than Smith machine squats, leg presses, or leg extensions. (5)
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Chris Bumstead: Setting the Standard
Bumstead’s retirement at the 2024 Classic Physique Olympia was a long time coming. Leading up to his last dance under the lights, Bumstead stoked retirement rumors by making nods to legendary basketballer Michael Jordan and his six NBA championship rings.
Fans may have seen the writing on the wall, but his retirement from the Classic Physique Olympia is hardly the last chapter in CBum’s book. He’s set to make his debut in the Men’s Open bodybuilding division at the 2024 EVLS Prague Pro.
After that? It’s anyone’s guess, but we almost certainly haven’t heard the last “What is up, YouTube?” from CBum.
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References
- Schoenfeld BJ, Ogborn D, Krieger JW. Effects of Resistance Training Frequency on Measures of Muscle Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports Med. 2016 Nov;46(11):1689-1697. doi: 10.1007/s40279-016-0543-8. PMID: 27102172.
- Maeo, Sumiaki & Wu, Yuhang & Huang, Meng & Sakurai, Hikaru & Kusagawa, Yuki & Sugiyama, Takashi & Kanehisa, Hiroaki & Isaka, Tadao. (2022). Triceps brachii hypertrophy is substantially greater after elbow extension training performed in the overhead versus neutral arm position. European Journal of Sport Science. 1-26. 10.1080/17461391.2022.2100279.
- Connolly DA, Brennan KM, Lauzon CD. Effects of active versus passive recovery on power output during repeated bouts of short term, high intensity exercise. J Sports Sci Med. 2003 Jun 1;2(2):47-51. PMID: 24616610; PMCID: PMC3938048.
- Pedrosa GF, Lima FV, Schoenfeld BJ, Lacerda LT, Simões MG, Pereira MR, Diniz RCR, Chagas MH. Partial range of motion training elicits favorable improvements in muscular adaptations when carried out at long muscle lengths. Eur J Sport Sci. 2022 Aug;22(8):1250-1260. doi: 10.1080/17461391.2021.1927199. Epub 2021 May 23. PMID: 33977835.
- Clark, Dave R.; Lambert, Mike I.; Hunter, Angus M.. Muscle Activation in the Loaded Free Barbell Squat: A Brief Review. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 26(4):p 1169-1178, April 2012. | DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0b013e31822d533d
Featured Image: @cbum / Instagram
