If you watched the webcast of the 2009 IFBB Mr. Olympia contest (or followed the results on any of the many websites covering it), you probably noticed Jay Cutler return to the stage with a lifetime best conditioning, and at a very light body weight to boot. He wasn’t the mass monster of years past. In 2003 or 2004, he would have been lucky to grab 6th place with a physique like that. However, in 2009 he won the Sandow trophy with this new level of shape – not size. Even though he still had a certain level of blockiness unavoidable because of his frame, he still managed to win the whole show. It wasn’t only Jay. Look at Branch Warren, Phil Heath, Kai Greene, and Dexter Jackson. They rounded out the top 5, ...

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Winning bodybuilding a show isn’t about who can bring the most muscle to the stage on any given Saturday night. It’s not about which man is the most conditioned. It’s not about who is the best poser, the best looking, or who can move the most weight. Instead, the winner of any given bodybuilding show is the man who arrives onstage with the best possible combination of muscle mass, conditioning, symmetry, shape, and presentation. In the professional bodybuilding ranks, it’s difficult to pick out a winner, in many cases. Every man in the top 6 at any show has a perfect combination of body parts, delivers great genetic shape, and has attained a great degree of conditioning. In other words, everyone at that level has everything put together right. At that level, flaws just ...

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