Building Artem’s Elite Natural Physique

The path of how a decently in shape 32 year old obtained an elite natural physique in just a few years working out only 3 days a week:

But first a few pictures…

In 2022 Artem came to me frustrated and wanting more.

He had been training for 5 years on his own and his progress had stalled out. He wasn’t getting any stronger, he wasn’t as muscular as he wanted to be, and he knew that if he wanted to push his body further without getting injured he needed a professionals help.

Truth be told he was small, light, weak, and with two major imbalances that risked severe injury to his shoulder and hip/back.

That was the situation he was in and that’s no discredit to him, we are talking about a guy who is incredibly competent, intelligent, passionate about fitness, detail oriented, and hard working yet he STILL found himself stuck. I see so many people in this exact same position wasting their potential by trying to do it all themselves.

He had some positive things going for him:

• He was fairly lean (no where near fat)

• He had built up some lean muscle in his 5 years of training

• He had better cardiovascular (heart) conditioning than the average person stepping into the gym.

• He had good muscular genetic insertions

He had a few negative things working against him:

• He had a chronically dislocating shoulder (7 times total) that was recently operated on along with a lack of shoulder mobility and poor stabilization patterns that came with it.

• He had a massive rotational imbalance in his hips that put his hips Sacro Illiac (SI) joint at risk of being injured on squats

• He had a weak core and poor movement/stability tendencies that risked back injury

• He had bad exercise technique that he had built up over years

Artem Day 1 showing me his deadlift technique

His lifts at the time were:

Bodyweight: 75kgs

Squat: 205lbs

Benchpress: 163 lbs x 4

Deadlift: 330lbs

His goals were to: get stronger on those big 3 lifts and put on muscle

To achieve this we had to rebuild Artem from the ground up.

We started by:

1)   setting out to eliminate his bodies imbalances, lack of mobility, and poor stabilization movement patterns with specialized exercises specific to his needs.  Focused on his right shoulder, core, and hips.

2)   Improving his work capacity

3)   Improving his exercise technique on the squat, deadlift, and benchpress

His shoulder lacked stability and needed to learn how to stabilize against his ribcage. Up until now his scapula was constantly “winging” off of his ribcage so he needed direct serratus anterior work and needed to learn how it should move, look, and feel as he went through movements. His shoulder lacked the ability to rotate to the appropriate amount so we restored mobility with specialty exercises. These two factors set the foundation for his future pain free improvement in his upper body. There were a few other important breakthroughs in his shoulder like teaching his shoulder blade to tilt posteriorly and stabilize there which allowed us to start pushing weight overhead safely. He made slow but steady progress here.

His core was not stabilizing properly and he would fall into an arched back position which often caused a dangerous “butt-wink “ in the bottom of squats and deadlifts and excessive movement through his core under load risking a herniated disc. With the focus on core training his core strength took off extremely fast. Like a seal to water he went from working on the basic body hollow to doing full Bruce Lee dragon flies faster than anyone I’ve seen before. This was very impressive and allowed him to start safely training deadlifts with some serious intensity

His hip imbalance was too severe to risk squats without exposing him to massive injury risk. He had a nasty hip shift to the right and poor stability in the position. We refocused away from squats to plenty of single leg work and drove up his work capacity as much as possible. His ability to push through the discomfort of the muscle burn and his conditioning helped him adapt to this slightly better than the average person. After quite a while focused on single leg work and putting on some muscle he could start to safely relearn squats starting from the bare basics…goblet squats.

Dangerous hip imbalance

Getting crazy strong in his core after ~1 year of training

After around a year focused primarily on these he was seeing good strength and muscle growth. He was finally primed and ready for the next steps in his evolution now that he could train hard without risking injury. 

The focus this time?

1) Get strong on benchpress, pull-ups, and deadlifts. Getting them strong alongside other lifts that support them

2) Pack on as much muscle as possible

3) Teach him to squat now that it was safe to do so.

4) Manage his bodies tendency to revert back towards his original imbalances and lack of mobility

With this new focus alongside scientifically optimized programming and good nutritional habits he started to really unleash his potential. Pushing himself to new PRs weekly his benchpress, pull-ups, and deadlifts skyrocketed. With the focus on work capacity early on he was now able to handle so much heavy weight and sets during these workouts that he started to pack on a ton of muscle. With the assistance of weight machines and some specific core stabilization exercises for his specific core rotational and side bending imbalances he got well acquainted with squatting movements and stability. After a while he was able to start squatting totally safely and with intensity. This squats started to rapidly catch up with his other lifts. His progress was managed with good programming, exercise selection, and technique feedback in conjunction with good eating to keep things progressing smoothly.

Artem now:

Bodyweight: 84kgs

Squat: 140Kg x 5

Benchpress: 235lbs  x 5

Deadlift: 405 lbs

Artem Deadlifting 405lbs

Artem now receives compliments frequently from strangers on how great a shape his is in from places like business conventions and the dog park and his girlfriend loves his new physique. He really has been able to build one of the best natural physiques you will see on just 3 workouts a week.

His goals now? Just keep getting bigger and stronger while staying healthy to see how far he can push things. I know I can’t wait to see it!