Chris Bumstead Shares High Carb Day, Back Workout For 2023 Olympia

Chris Bumstead is taking full benefit of his private gym, the Bum Lifting Club in the 2023 Olympia prep. Recently, Bumstead dealt with a back and biceps workout to get ready and fend off the challengers to his throne. He also shared the high-carbohydrates day and posted the video on YouTube.

Chris Bumstead is a Canadian IFBB Pro bodybuilder. He is arguably the most popular active bodybuilder in the world today and the 28-year-old’s name has become synonymous with the term ‘domination’ in the Classic Physique division for almost half a decade.

Bumstead is a four-time Classic Physique Olympia champion and has won the coveted trophy from 2019 to 2022. The division is home to some of the youngest and most talented bodybuilders in the sport. However, CBum has managed to fend off the competition quite handily to defend his top spot for a long time.

Although his time in competitive bodybuilding is coming to an end, the 28-year-old aims to win a few more Classic Physique Olympia trophies before calling it a career. Additionally, the anticipation about the Canadian’s prospects in the Men’s Open division has been steadily building up over the last year as some well-respected experts have urged the champion to try his hand in the big boys’ weight class.

However, Bumstead’s primary objective is to bring home the fifth Classic Physique title at the 2023 Olympia. This has been one of his most challenging competition preps but Bumstead has been progressing steadily, as witnessed in recent physique updates.

Chris Bumstead shares his high-carbohydrate day

This was the high carb day in Chris Bumstead’s current diet where the overall carbohydrate intake for the day increases to 500 grams from 250 grams. The meals on his high carb day are pretty much similar to the 2700-calorie competition prep diet that CBum follows. Increased carbohydrate intake is the only change in his meals.

A high carb day means approximately 100 grams extra carbohydrates per meal. He did not share the entire high day in the video but shed light on his breakfast, pre-workout and post-workout meal.

A few days before the high day, Chris Bumstead’s weight was not dropping down but he felt flat and tired with all the training and diet. He was five weeks out of Olympia at this time.

“So this is like my last chance to jam a bunch of food in me and not worry about being put back a day or two because we’re getting into grind.”

Therefore Bumstead chose this day to increase the carbohydrate intake on this particular day.

Try this carbohydrate calculator.

Here’s what the high-carb meals look like:

Meal 1

• Oats – 70 grams
• Whole Eggs – 2 no.s
• Cinnamon Resin Bagels – 2 whole
• Full Sugar Ketchup
• Blueberries
• GDA (Glucose disposal agent)
• Whey Protein – 1 scoop

Meal 2 – Pre-workout meal

• Fresh Atlantic Cod – 200 grams
• White Rice – 250 grams
• Rice Cakes – 2 no.s

Meal 3 – Post-workout meal

• Sweet Potato Fries – 500 grams
• Fillet Magnon – 180 grams

Chris Bumstead tackles a back workout

Standing One Arm Cable Low Rows

Bumstead kicked off the training session with the movement he learned from Eddie Shephard of qualitymuscle. Earlier this year, the duo trained together quite a few times and CBum found this to be an excellent one to start back training with.

“Elbow close to the body and you rotate the body away from the weight. So you’re getting a full stretch in the lats without having to rotate your body too much. This machine doesn’t really go heavy but it feels really good to warm up,” Chris Bumstead explained.

After doing a couple of sets of the exercise, CBum advanced over to the main workout.

Bent Over Barbell Rows

This served as the first heavy compound movement of the day. However, Chris Bumstead executed this exercise with a specific goal of targeting the lower lats. He explained:

“Really trying to focus on pulling low into my hips rather than high to engage my traps less, hit more lower lats – something that Hany is trying to stress on me to do more because I try to over activate my traps all the time. Probably that’s why I get the headaches all the time. We’re just trying to get, like, the depth, thickness in the lower back a little bit more.”

Chris Bumstead tried to squeeze and hold the weight at the top to focus on contraction. He lowered the weight with controlled and slow motions to increase the time spent under tension. After finishing the first two sets with the overhand grip, the reigning Classic Physique Olympia champion used underhand grip for the next two sets. Underhand grip directs the focus more towards the lower lats and hips.

Lat Pulldown

Chris Bumstead next tackled the lat pulldown on Panatta converging lat pulldown machine.

“I did three movements from down below so I wanted to do more of a pulldown motion and Panatta machine’s been great to me,” he said.

CBum felt comfortable to load up three plates on each side to do this exercise since it was a high-carb day. Normally, he prefers limiting the weight to two-and-a-quarter plates on either side. He cranked out three good sets of the exercise using overhand, underhand and neutral grip to stimulate different parts of the muscle with unique angles.

Chest Supported T-Bar Rows

T-bar row is one of the most important and highly effective exercises of the back. This movement works almost all the upper posterior chain muscles and helps impart thickness and width to it. CBum performed the chest-supported machine variation to stimulate the back muscles further and went back to working with vertical pulling exercise next.

Medium Neutral Grip Lat Pulldown

This served as the last back exercise for the training session. The Canadian bodybuilder cranked out solid sets using a neutral grip bar to work the lats and then proceeded to do the only biceps exercise of the training session.

Standing Dumbbell Curls

Bumstead performed standing dumbbell curls with incrementally heavier weights. Although this muscle group is stimulated with most of the compound pulling movements, Bumstead pays equal attention to emphasizing it with isolation exercises like dumbbell curls. He executed some good sets of the exercise in the concluding part of the workout and called it a day in the gym.

Overall, the workout included: 

• Standing One Arm Cable Low Rows – 2 sets of 10  to 12 reps
• Bent Over Barbell Rows – 2 sets with overhand grip and 2 sets with underhand grip
• Lat Pulldown – 3 sets of 10 to 12 reps (one set each with overhand,  underhand and neutral grip
• Chest Supported T-Bar Rows – 1 heavy set with four plates and 1 drop set
• Medium Neutral Grip Lat Pulldown – 2 sets of 10 to 12 reps
• Standing Dumbbell Curls – 2 sets of 12 to 15 reps

CBum on the ideal length of competition prep

The length of competition prep is among the debated topics. While some bodybuilders feel that they get the best results with 8 to 10 weeks of prep, there are others that feel the longer the prep, the better it is for their physique. Chris Bumstead shared his thoughts on this and said:

“I honestly think at this point, 16 weeks are the bare minimum. This is the leanest off-season that I ever had. And I started at about 15-16 weeks out. Then I had this five-week chunk of just nothing going, right?”

He added:

“And I was still able to pull it back together and get where I need to be because I gave myself enough time. But if I had a good 16 weeks, I could have been having a refeed, like, every week, my metabolism would be firing, mentally I’d be a lot nicer because I get to eat more food.”

Chris Bumstead concluded:

“It is a lot better to do it that way rather than having to crash that and jam your body down and not give it refeed days. So if I can give a tip, prep longer than you think. You’re not going to shrivel away, especially if you’re properly doing refeeds.”

Bumstead was not keen on losing massive amounts of weight in a short period of time and risk his health. This was also an important reason for starting the prep early.

2023 Olympia takes place from November 3 to 5 in Orlando, Florida. Less than three weeks away from the show, Bumstead is now focusing on adding finishing touches to his physique. It will be interesting to see if the division catches up with the dominant champion this year.

Watch full video below, courtesy of Chris Bumstead’s personal YouTube channel:

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