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Art Atwood Bodybuilder

Art Atwood Tribute Page

Art Atwood Picture

Art Atwood was born on December 27, 1973 in and died in 2011 from a heart attack that he had at his home in Wisconsin. Art spent his whole life training in Texas but started a successful supplement business when he turned professional as a bodybuilder.

Art was 5"11" and competed at about 278 pounds coming in each time better than he looked before. Art started his bodybuilding career by making his professional bodybuilding debut in 2001 Toronto Pro where he took 1st place. He then continued to compete on a regular basis and in his first IFBB Mr. Olympia in 2002 he placed 12th.

Art started training as a bodybuilder at the tender age of only 15 and to put it in his own words he was not blessed with the genetics that he needed to be a competitive bodybuilder and he changed his body with a lot of hard work.

Art Atwood Workout

We will briefly be looking at some of the super high volume training that Art believed in to get results.

We all know that volume training gets results and this is not news that is something new because most of the professional bodybuilders have all used high volume training at some time to increase the amount of muscle that they carry.

Art not only believed strongly in high volume training but also believed in doing half-reps when doing compound movements. He would do that with every workout where he would first do all the necessary warm-up sets and after reaching the point of failure with 6 or 8 reps would then start with half reps.

A good example of how he would do half-rep deadlifts where he explains in his own words exactly how he would do them. "The pull is steady and powerful but controlled, so I can feel it in every muscle in my back. At the top, I get a full lockout and squeeze, holding it for a second. My first set is with five plates per side, then five plates and a quarter, then six plates, and always for 10 reps."

He continues by adding "These are such a psych that I actually get stronger with each set, which is a cautionary statement: don’t try to go to failure during these, or you'll risk lower-back injury. However, I go right to the threshold of complete failure, focusing on feeling my back muscles strain."

Below we see a basic back workout that Art would use:

Front pull-downs 6 X 8 Bent barbell rows 2 X8 Half-rep deadlifts 3 X10 Seated cable rows 4 X8

Note: For information on volume training for natural bodybuilders checkout Muscle Express Training.

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