The World's Strongest Back

The gym that eight-time Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman made famous isn’t a place for the faint of heart. Metroflex is tailor-made for those who eat, sleep and breathe bodybuilding, a dusty, hot, rundown temple of iron in the lunch pail town of Arlington, Texas.
Ronnie, however, isn’t the only pro to build prodigious muscle at Brian Dobson’s hardcore haven. These days, two other heavyweights regularly do battle there, slapping cobwebs and dust off barbells and dumbbells, pushing each other to maniacal feats of strength as a matter of due course, and leaving rivulets of sweat on the floor in their lumbering wake.

Johnnie Jackson and Branch Warren have had a training partnership that stretches back years. “We share the desire, the challenge of wanting to be the best, and that’s a connection we had way before we even turned pro,” Johnnie says. After a break of a few years, they’re back at it, pushing each other to ever greater heights, as Branch stalks a chance to improve upon his near-miss second- and third-place finishes at the 2009 and 2010 Mr. Olympia, respectively, and Johnnie cements his legend as a dual-threat powerlifter and elite bodybuilding competitor.

Coming Alive with Deadlifts

On this particular Tuesday, Johnnie goes it alone as he prepares for a brutal back attack. “There are bodyparts I’m stronger at, and bodyparts he’s stronger at, but overall we’re pretty even strengthwise,” Johnnie says of his prodigious partner as he pulls on a pair of Schiek lifting gloves. “But you barely see it, because we normally use the same weight. Nobody’s ever been able to do that. I’ve never had anyone keep up with me on weights like he does.”
Most people ease into their workout. But most people aren’t Johnnie Jackson. He leads off with the deadlift, doing two “lighter” sets (working up to 315 pounds), followed by increasingly heavier working sets.

 

The deadlift warms up the whole body,” Johnnie points out. “It’s where I’m going to move the most weight too, so I put it first while I’m fresh.” With his feet flat and about shoulder-width apart beneath the loaded bar, Johnnie squats down and grasps it just outside his knees. The bar rests flush against his shins to start, and with his chest expanded and back flat, he hoists the bar by extending his hips and knees explosively to a standing position. He knows the closer the bar is to the body, the better; you almost want to scrape it against yourself all the way up.
From the top, Johnnie tenses his whole body, then lowers the bar down along the same path to the floor. “I do deadlifts in the gym exactly how I’d perform them at a meet,” he says. “There’s no better way, and it prepares me for competition.”

A sip of water, and it’s on to the lat pulldown. “I’ll do five sets, starting at 120 pounds and working up to the full stack,” he says as he takes his position on the seat, a wide, overhand grip on the angled ends of the bar.

With his abs tight and back slightly arched, feet planted on the floor for support, Johnnie squeezes his shoulder blades together and leads with his elbows to bring the bar down to his upper chest. He takes a quick pause before his arms extend to return to the start position.
“Just use a slight backward lean,” he instructs between sets. “It’s very important to stay in control when you’re doing this exercise. If you’re going from a near upright position and leaning back near 90 degrees as you pull down, that’s all lower back, not upper lats. You’re putting too much unnecessary pressure on your lower spine, too.”

For good measure, the last set is a drop set. He does 20 reps with the full stack of 380, drops the pin to 300 for 15, and then powers out 12 reps with 250 before moving on to T-bar rows. 

The T-bar row (not shown) starts with two sets, the first with three plates for 10 reps, and the second with four plates for the same. Those are the “warm up.” Work sets are palpably different in intensity, as he loads up to five plates, then seven and finally 10.

The situation becomes more intriguing, as he grunts through a killer drop set. He starts with 10 plates, dropping two plates for another 10, and then another two plates down to six for as many reps as he can muster — today, 14 — before dropping the handles and breathing deep and hard. Unbelievably, his rest is short, as it has been throughout. Then he methodically loads up a barbell for the bent-over row.

Why the swift pace? “You definitely get into a pretty fast rhythm with Branch,” Johnnie explains as he steps up to the loaded barbell. “I just rest long enough for him to finish his set and then I’m going again. As soon as we start the workout, it’s just rapid fire, heavy breathing all the way through. I don’t catch my breath until I’m in the car on the way home. That’s what I’m accustomed to.”

Johnnie bends down and takes an unusually narrow overhand grip on the bar. “I take a little bit of a closer grip than standard,” he says. “Most guys will take a grip just outside shoulder width, but I’ve found doing it this way I get a better squeeze in my back.”

Three sets ensue as he works up to 405 for 10 reps. In doing them, he leans forward at his waist until his torso is just above parallel with the floor, the bar hanging straight down in front of his shins. He pulls the bar into his abdomen, bringing his elbows toward the ceiling above the level of his back, exhaling hard before lowering. Without touching down, he sucks in a breath and explodes into his next rep.

About five weeks out from several spring contests, including the 2011 Arnold Classic (he placed seventh) and the IFBB British Grand Prix, he placed third, qualifying for September’s Mr. Olympia, Johnnie trains with a focus befitting of a man about to step onto one of the biggest stages in bodybuilding. He admits that his workouts don’t vary that wildly between the offseason and precontest. In other words, they’re always heavy, hard and awe-inspiring.
“My workouts are basically the same style — the only thing that changes is the amount of weight, which drops off a little,” he says. “When you’re prepping for a contest, there’s never enough fuel, never enough food, and you’re always hungry on the diet. The lighter weight, though, is mostly about being more cautious and avoiding an injury that would knock me out of a contest.”

With that, he sets up shop at the seated row station, sitting upright on the bench facing the weight stack. Placing his soles against the foot platform with his legs slightly bent, he reaches forward and grasps the close-grip handle. From there, he leans back a bit to disengage 100 pounds from the stack, then starts. He sits upright and pulls the handle toward his midsection, keeping his elbows in tight next to his body, squeezing hard as the handle reaches his abdomen.

On every rep, he extends his arms to full extension while leaning forward rather than staying in the upright position throughout. “You want to get the maximum stretch,” he explains after three sets of 15 reps. “If you don’t stretch the muscle, you’re working only part of it. Using a full range gives you the full benefit. You don’t want to lean backward at the top, though. Sit straight up — leaning back invites momentum. When you see people doing that, it means they’ve chosen a weight they can’t really handle.”

The last exercise of the workout serves as a solid example of the term “finisher” — if it doesn’t finish your back off for the day, you haven’t been trying hard enough. Johnnie performs pull-ups with a wide overhand grip, going from a dead-hang position on the bar up until his chin clears it. He makes sure his elbows are flared out to the sides throughout to best engage the lats.
Three sets of 10, and he drops to the floor, takes a few steps and straddles the end of a bench, exhausted, toweling off beads of sweat from his forehead. His back pumped and aching, a sly smile of satisfaction breaks across his face as another productive session is firmly in the books.

With the back assault complete, the surroundings start drawing back into focus. There are only a few others in the gym at the moment — among them a powerlifter chalking up, and what appears to be a mixed martial artist rotating between jump rope and crunches in the corner. At this point, Johnnie does a little more of what he couldn’t quite do for long stretches during the torrid pace of training: He speaks.

“I’m currently working with George Farah [pro bodybuilder and nutritional consultant]. He’s doing all of my nutrition,” Johnnie says. “That’s who helped me with my look at the 2010 Olympia [where he finished a respectable 11th], and we’ve improved from there.” A number of pundits are saying that the 2011 version of Johnnie Jackson is the best one ever.

 

Looking ahead, as Johnnie has already qualified for the 2011 Olympia, he’s now focused on entering a powerlifting meet mid-year, something he’s been known to do in the past as he pursues both physical passions. “The easiest way to put it is that I’m like a little kid; I want to go on the playground as much as I can,” he says of his dual competitive goals in two very demanding disciplines. “As a kid, you don’t know all the stresses in life yet. In doing bodybuilding and powerlifting, it’s getting away, doing something fun for me, so that all the stresses in life are gone. I just thank God I’m able to do it at the level I’m at.”

Notably, he’s doing both at an elevated level at the age of 40, a milestone he reached on Jan. 30, celebrating with his wife Rebecca and his two-year-old daughter. “I’m not shy about it at all,” he says of the birthday. “Physically, I’m as healthy and feeling as strong as I’ve been in awhile. I want to take advantage of it and keep competing.” As for retirement, he’s realistic, but has no firm plans to step away quite yet. “I’m not going to be an idiot — once gravity starts taking over, I’ll know it’s time to walk away,” he says. “But as long as I feel good and I can train the way I’m training, then I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing.”