The posedown is one of the key moments in every bodybuilding competition. It is a time when the competitors get to show their best stuff. They move around the stage and flex their muscles for the judges. It looks easy to some extent—that is until you try it.
As you know, I am in the middle of Mission Grand Prix. Part of this process is learning to pose properly. I take posing lessons once a week from a coach (Ken Turchek). He has taught me all of the mandatory poses. I have learned a lot during the past month and through my own practice posing sessions. As I have gone through the process I have come up with the following thoughts on posing:
- Posing is not easy. In order to show the muscles properly you must flex tightly. Even if you are flexing your chest, your legs need to be flexed as well. It is hard work!
- Posing is not intuitive. There are things about posing that just don’t make a lot of sense until you actually do them. The chest, for instance, pops out differently than you’d expect.
- Posing can be helped by training. You can improve certain poses by doing certain exercises during your training sessions. To work on the most muscular “crab” pose you can do cable crossovers at the end of a chest training. It will help tremendously.
- Posing takes practice. You can’t just learn to pose in a short amount of time. My advice to any aspiring bodybuilder is spend time with a coach and then spend even more time practicing on your own.
- Posing is different for everyone. There are small amounts of leeway when posing that you can use to emphasize strengths and hide weaknesses. You have to know where that leeway is in order to take advantage.
- Posing reveals your conditioning. When you pose your conditioning is totally exposed. If you have done a good job of conditioning the judges won’t notice much during your posing. At the same time, if you have not conditioned yourself well, the judges will see it in an instant.
- Posing is tiring. I once did a posing session prior to a shoulder session. I was exhausted and the training session was that much more difficult as a result. I learned to never pose before training.
The takeaway here is that posing is essential to your success as a bodybuilder. Get on it early so that you have time to master it.
