Chris Bumstead recently posted to his Youtube channel, to share a glimpse into his childhood and a full-shoulder workout. Bumstead is bouncing back after catching Covid around the Christmas holiday. The virus took a toll on his weight as he said he is roughly 28lbs lighter than usual for an off-season weight.
WHO IS CHRIS BUMSTEAD?
If you don't know who Chris Bumstead is, you probably should. Chris is a Canadian IFBB Pro bodybuilder, the co-owner of Raw Nutrition. At 26 years old, Chris Bumstead, AKA CBum, is the reigning champion of the Mr. Olympia Classic Physique, which has won the last three years (2019,2020,2021) in a row. The two years before that, he was the runner-up.
Bumstead grew up playing sports and began lifting weights at age 14. After lifting for a few years, he reached 225lbs around the time he finished highschool. At this time, he also crossed paths with professional bodybuilder Iain Valliere who was dating Chris' sister. Valliere took Bumstead under his wings and has coached him since.
At 19 years old, Bumstead made his first competitive appearance. Then at 21, he won his Pro card by winning 2016's IFBB North American Bodybuilding Championship. He hasn't looked back since as he continues his supremacy. CBum has been successful on and off stage as he has a large social media following and sells his own line of supplements that's made for "Thavages ."This is part of the reason why he receives so much love; the guy doesn't take himself too seriously as he makes fun of his lisp.
With that out of the way, let's hop into the video.
Bumstead with Professional Skateboarding Aspirations?
The video starts with a gentleman attempting to do a trick on a skateboard at a skatepark. You can tell he is nervous and fails his first attempt at the trick. You can tell the video is being shot late at night.
After a brief intro, the video returns to Chris talking about getting back into skateboarding and buying an April board from the internet. It turns out that the board is a fake one from Walmart. The first five minutes of the video is Chris and his friends having a good time attempting tricks at the skatepark, with one of his friends making a goal to do the halfpipe by the end of 2022. Chris also makes a goal to do a kickflip. At the end of the skate session, Chris said he fell on his tailbone and was making jokes about how he was a professional skateboarder.
CHRIS BUMSTEAD'S SHOULDER WORKOUT
The camera transitions to the next day at the gym, where Chris starts by saying his shoulder is messed up and has been working around it. He plans on getting some peptides, and other things shot into his shoulder to aid with recovery.
Warmup Single-arm Cable Rear Delt Flys
His warmup starts with some single-arm rear delt cable flys. Weight seems to be roughly in the 30-40 pound range; reps and tempo are both relatively high as the goal with this rear delt exercise is for him to warm up. After a couple sets, Chris could be heard saying it felt heavy and wasn't sure that he liked this exercise to start with.
Seated Smith Machine Overhead Press
Chris moves on to the Smith machine, where he performs a warmup set of seated shoulder presses with just the bar. Apparently, he gets asked all the time why he performs his shoulder presses on the Smith machine. His reasoning was that his shoulder is messed up, and he finds that the Smith machine exercises work the best to get his muscles huge, compared to dumbbell or barbell presses. He quickly moves up in weight by adding 2-45's and a 25 on each side. While completing his reps, his range of motion is right below eye level to full extension overhead. Rep range on this exercise seems to be in the 6-8 range.
Seated Lateral Raises
The third exercise in Chris's workout is seated lateral raise with a 30 lb dumbbell in each hand. He kept the reps high (12-15 range) and kept the tempo high during each set. According to Chris, standing lateral raises hurt his shoulder so he does them sitting back and keeping his arms straight with his wrists bent. By sitting, he says he can isolate the delts more, have no pain, and feel more of a burn.
Smith Machine Shoulder Press
Immediately after completing lateral raises, Chris moved on to his second machine shoulder press of the day. Since machine work is easier to control and isolate, he started his first working set kind of heavy, with 4-45's on each side. They didn't show much of this exercise before moving on to the next exercise.
Lateral Raises with Machine
The second to last exercise of the day is a lateral shoulder raise machine. Chris, after every exercise today, seems to say it is heavy but maintains excellent form while doing everything. Chris gave his opinion on the new Spider-Man movie (no spoilers, I promise!), which he gave a 9 out of 10 rating. For his last set, he completes a dropset, which means he completed his initial set at failure and then dropped some weight and completed more reps until failure again.
Rear Delt Flys with Machine
We are finally at the end of the workout, where Chris finishes it off with three sets of some rear delt flys on the machine. You can tell he is getting tired and doesn't have much to say at this point. The video goes straight to black, ending the video.
Sample Chris Bumstead Shoulder Workout
We have modeled the following shoulder workout on the one Chris completed in the video above.
- Warmup- Cable Rear Delt Flys: 3 sets x 15 per arm, a 30-second break between sets
- Smith Machine Shoulder Press- 4 sets x 6-8 reps (Don't let the bar go below nose level)
- Seated DB Lateral Raises- 3 sets x 12 reps (Sit back and keep arms straight with curled wrists)
- Machine Shoulder Press: 3 sets x 12 reps
- Lateral Shoulder Raises with Machine: 4 sets x 12 reps (Last set complete a dropset to failure)
- Machine Rear Delt Flys: 2 sets x 15 reps
Note: If you don't have certain machine at your gym you can substitute with dumbbells or barbell for presses.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
We continue to see top-level bodybuilders shares some of their tips they use in the gym, one thing that is a constant is the use of machines. Maybe it's time to mix in a few more machine based exercises to really focus on the target muscle.
If you're interested in replicating more of Bumstead's programming, check out the Chris Bumstead workout routine and diet, which he follows in his off-season training. Even Covid didn't make Bumstead lose a step. We love what the man is doing and will continue to follow him on his journey.
If you end up trying this workout, let us know in the comments below what you think about it!
Andrew Lenau
Author