Interview with Mirco Caselli, IFBB bodybuilder
Mirco Caselli is 38 years old, lives in Bologna, practices bodybuilding at a competitive level and currently exercises the profession of Personal Trainer in a gym in Vignola, in the province of Modena.
Interview conducted on May 29, 2012
Hello Riccardo. We have known each other for a few years ... therefore you will already know that I do not see my work as a simple profitable activity; for me, being an athletic trainer of "Body Building" is a vocation, or rather a passion that has turned into a reason for living!
Often those who approach Body-Building do it superficially, but as a technician, I know with certainty that to reach certain levels it is essential not to leave anything to chance. Speaking of which, what about the planning and training of a bodybuilder?
The importance of planning and preparation is very important, primary ... indeed, essential!
In the first place it is crucial to establish HOW LOT of time you have available. With the certainty of being able to better manage the athlete's time resources, it is possible to program a period that we body-builders call MASS. In this period of time the athlete tries to reach the maximum level of muscular HYPERTROPHY and PROPORTION-FORMS muscles that emphasize the appearance and above all that improve the SYMMETRY.
Then it is time to move on to the DEFINITION phase which currently has to reach extreme levels, up to 4/5% of subcutaneous body fat.
Everything is managed through training, nutrition and integration; obviously, the more time you have, the more these phases are handled with care. To be clear, I would like to underline that unlike the methods used in the '80s and' 90s, where in the "mass" phase there was a tendency to increase weight without taking care of the quality of the lean mass / fat mass ratio (up to 15 / 20 kg MORE "than the competition weight), now it is preferable not to exceed 6/8 kg of excess mass. A similar strategy is justifiable for the optimization of the mass saving in the definition phase (which is known, in cutting generally tends to decrease), and above all, minimally affects the general psycho-physical stress.
Let's talk about methods and techniques; in professional and layman gyms they make use of somewhat questionable principles, sketch some physiological explanations but in my opinion no one has any idea what he says ... In your opinion, the infinite dissemination of new techniques and new methods is really justified by continuous research perfection or is it just advertising stunts?
If you ask me which is the best technique ... in my opinion there is no better strategy than another, but certainly there is an OPTIMAL technique FOR THE SINGLE INDIVIDUAL! There are organisms that respond more to a Heavy Duty rather than a Tri Set ... those who have to add AEROBIC activity to lose weight and those who DO NOT EVEN SKETCH IT. Personally I tend to work with DIFFERENT techniques in parallel, characterized by long and intense work; ultimately, in the 25 years during which I have lifted cast iron I managed to create an absolutely personalized and constantly evolving super-method. I must admit that the great difficulty that I have always had, and now more than ever, is to get into MUSCLE ACIDOSIS (a fundamental aspect); with age i cellular metabolisms change and today it is more difficult for me than 15 years ago. This means that the evolution of training must take into account both intra-individual and inter-individual variables.
