Hunter Labrada has been working hard to reinsert his name in the list of top five Mr. Olympia competitors. One of the popular bodybuilders in the Men’s Open division of the IFBB Pro League, Hunter Labrada made his professional bodybuilding debut in 2020 and has produced some great performances so far.
Labrada’s best showing on the Mr. Olympia stage came in 2021 when he walked away with a fourth-place finish. He has achieved top-seven finishes in the two subsequent Mr. Olympia appearances.
Bodybuilding is an uber-competitive sport and Labrada has seen the ups and downs of a career in this sport. His goal this competitive season is to win two pro shows before the 2024 Mr. Olympia and dethrone newly crowned king Derek Lunsford to finish the competitive season.
At the moment, Labrada is focusing on improving his physique. In the most recent video posted on his YouTube, he handled an intense push-day workout and shared some important tips. So let’s see how Labrada dealt with the training session.
Hunter Labrada goes through a push-day workout
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Hunter Labrada’s chest workout consisted of the following exercises:
- Machine Incline Chest Press – 2 warm-up sets and 2 working sets of 12 to 15 reps
- Superset – Pec Deck Flyes and Incline Smith Machine Chest Press – 1 warm-up set and 2 working sets of 12 to 15 reps of each exercise
- Slight Incline Dumbbell Chest Press – 1 warm-up set and 1 working set of 10 to 12 reps
- Machine Shoulder Press – 2 sets of 10 to 12 reps
- Machine Lateral Raises – 2 sets of 10 to 12 reps
Incline Chest Press Machine
The Labrada scion performed this exercise on the Atlantis plate-loaded machine. However, he insisted that any incline set-up – Smith machine, Hammer Strength, among others – is acceptable.
“Your feet need to do something when you’re bench pressing – dug into the ground, really driving your hips and the upper back into the bench. They’re not flailing around, they’re not relaxed. The more stable you are, the more output you’re going to be able to have.”
Labrada noted that it’s important to not arch your back too much. Instead, a little bit of thoracic extension is the best way to position as it enables maximum stretch in the chest muscles.
Superset – Pec Deck Flyes and Incline Smith Machine Chest Press
Supersets are a great way to reduce overall workout time and increase aerobic intensity. Labrada next performed this superset to work the chest. He performed the banded version of Smith machine chest press to increase resistance and suggests following the same guidelines for the Smith machine as the machine incline chest press. However, he insisted on paying attention to a few important things while performing pec deck flyers:
“The biggest thing about this movement is to adduct the arms across your body. So we’re trying to get the biceps as close to the sternum as possible to force the biggest contraction.”
Labrada highlighted that the biggest mistake that most people make is trying to bring the fists together during pec deck flyers by keeping a slight bend in the elbows.
Slight Incline Dumbbell Chest Press
Labrada wrapped up the chest work with this free-weight movement. For the last few weeks, Hunter Labrada has been using the Nautilus flat press machine as the last compound movement of his chest training session. He explained the reason for switching to the dumbbell press:
“I haven’t pressed dumbbells in a really long time. I want to introduce some kind of free-weight component for the shoulder help and stability.”
Machine Shoulder Press
The Labrada Scion commenced the shoulder work with this anterior deltoid-focused movement. While discussing the correct posture to execute this exercise, he said:
“You do not want a huge amount of thoracic extension on this. If you don’t have the shoulder mobility to use your back against the bench, think about scooting your hips forward but maintaining a decent posture on your back. You don’t want to put all the stress on your spine.”
He suggests keeping the seat at a height where the complete range of motion of the machine concludes slightly below the ear level.
Machine Lateral Raises
The workout reached its climax after Labrada cranked out a few sets of this side delt-isolation movement. The 31-year-old suggests keeping the setup simple and focusing on only one thing – ensure that the seat height is such that the machine’s pivot point is running through the axis of shoulder rotation. He added:
“As far as execution goes, what we want is – to really get into it – we don’t want to be back. We always want to be straight up or a little bit forward. The reason being, we want to keep the middle delts on top the whole time.”
Hunter Labrada ended the video with glimpses of his posing session. Looking at the proportions, symmetry, and musculature of his physique, it seems likely that he will be able to shake things up in the 2024 competitive season and the 2025 Arnold Classic where he intends to compete for the whopping $500,000 prize.
Watch the full workout video below, courtesy of Hunter Labrada’s personal YouTube channel:
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