With the dust settling after Hadi Choopan’s 2024 Arnold Classic win, attention is shifting to the next Mr. Olympia contest. In a recent Prime Time Muscle Podcast, Terrick El Guindy and Chris Cormier laid out how Choopan and Dauda can improve their physiques for 2024 Mr. Olympia.
The table is set for an unforgettable Olympia contest scheduled for October 10-13 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Fans expect another event full of surprises, as last year saw a new champion emerge. Hadi Choopan ultimately lost his title to his teammate Derek Lunsford in a tightly contested show. Having claimed the 212 Olympia title in 2021, this 2023 Olympia victory established Lunsford as the organization’s first two-division champion.
Redemption weighed heavily on Choopan, and he used the defeat as fuel for his 2024 Arnold Classic prep. His efforts did not go unnoticed, as judges awarded him a decisive victory, defeating finalist Samson Dauda by 10 points on the scorecards.
Given that Dauda and Choopan have time until their next competition, Olympia judge Terrick El Guindy and Chris Cormier assessed their physiques, specifying what improvements could lead to them hoisting a Sandow trophy above their heads.
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Terrick El Guindy, Chris Cormier Break Down How Hadi Choopan & Samson Dauda Can Improve for 2024 Olympia
El Guindy judges various bodybuilding contests and believes Choopan would greatly benefit by returning to the conditioning levels he displayed in 2021.
“Let’s go back to your 2021 conditioning. Let’s make sure the shoulders don’t overpower the entire physique. Let’s make sure we have the back separation that we had in the past and let’s contain any further expansion of the midsection in terms of width and obviously, we don’t want any prominent abdominals coming out which he’s doing a good job but that’s my concern when I see guys very short bulking up,” explains Terrick El Guindy.“They are going to try to grow their quads, maybe the waist gets a little wider, Derek’s waist might get a little wider because they are trying to add size and then it becomes that battle of conditioning. You know, Hadi had much better conditioning right here. Hadi in 2021 was a lot tighter here [lower back]. Hadi had great back separation in 2021. We need to go back to that.”
“I think that’s going to come along with you know his food consumption. So, just keeping in mind all the different things that you just mentioned. You got to have a good eye for what you’re trying to accomplish with your physique.So, as you get older, the quads can get a little smaller the waist can get a little bigger, everything like that could happen, but I don’t know if he can can better and better in the quads because I thought I saw a little bit of a decline, a little bit, in the side,” shares Chris Cormier.
“What does Hadi have to do? Because a lot of times we are comparing poses is you don’t need size here you have enough thickness and girth on the back, we have seen that. Let’s squeeze a little bit more of the conditioning. The leaner you are, the bigger you look,” shares El Guindy.
“If you’re born with this, real small, real tiny [waist], everything else looks better, okay? Everything else. The quad sweep looks better, the V-taper looks better, the small waist is a huge genetic advantage he has.What does Samson have to do to win? Two major things, write it down Samson Dauda, I won’t repeat myself. The first thing, he needs to be more conditioned.”
“We need to see deeper separation across the entire physique. The second thing is right behind you Chris Cormier, he needs more back width, and more back thickness,” says El Guindy. “If he has those two things, he is very much like a Lee Haney-type of talent.”
“You want to see that balance. That balance of him bringing that same girth, that same size of the lower body and put that on the back, which has been something that he’s been improving on,” shared Cormier.
“British European bodybuilding, also British bodybuilding, we’ve had Dorian Yates, we forget Arnold Schwarzenegger is European right? Dorian Yates, European, Austria, they have not won in a long freakin’ time. I talked to the guys in Europe, they are like Terrick, we need this. We need somebody to represent over 300 million people here.”“This guy is the hope. He’s the next Dorian Yates, he’s the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. He needs to carry the European torch. They are tired of the Americans winning, they are tired of all the Middle Eastern guys coming in there and snatching those Olympia titles. He is the next British dynasty for them,” shares El Guiny.
Watch the full video from the Prime Time Muscle YouTube channel below:
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