Junior USA Champ Darron Glenn on Training/Diet
How This New Star Built Winning Size, Separation and Symmetrry
Oct 28, 2009
How Darron Glenn managed dramatic bodybuilding gains in less than a decade includes his progress as a bantamweight at natural events to his present status as an amateur light heavyweight champion at the national level. He began competing around 2002 in natural shows in the east and then by 2004 was competing in the NPC (National Physique Committee) first as a middle weight and most recently as a light heavyweight class bodybuilder. In 2009, he won the overall title at the NPC Junior USA Championship. Here this young North Carolina athlete, still on a competitive streak, details some of the points in his training and diet that gained him the size, separation and symmetry to do it:
Adjusting to a New Weight Class
Suite101: What would you say has changed the most for you in moving up from the middleight class to light heavyweight class?
Darron Glenn: The portion size of my meals. I mean, as a middlweight, I was eating around six ounces at each meal just to maintain the muscle that I was holding at around 190 some pounds, but now when I have to be at over 206 pounds of muscle, I've increased that to nine to 10 ounces -- which is a lot more eating with eight meals! Before as a middleweight, I had six meals daily, but now as a light heavyweight I have to eat eight meals. So everything's stepped up -- the intensity's stepped up as far as my training sessions also, now I can go a little heavier. Before as a middleweight, I did a lot of high volume just to keep the weight on.
Suite101: So with your training routine you moved away from doing high repetition sets of exercise and into doing higher weight instead?
Darron Glenn: Right.
Muscle Mass Gains with Improved Training, Supplementation
Suite101: What about supplementation -- how has that changed for you since you've moved up to competing in the light heavyweight class?
Darron Glenn: As a middlweight, I was taking five grams of glutamine, five grams of creatine. Now I'm implementing 10 grams of creatine and 10 grams of glutamine, and taking branched chain aminos at meals three times a day. My protein shakes increased from two scoops to two and a half scoops. So definitely the supplementation part of it has stepped up; the fat burners have stayed the same. But the main thing was, the more muscle I gained, the more supplementation was necessary to support repair and growth of the muscle fibers.
Suite101: What is your usual cardio routine like either in the in- or off-seasons?
Darron Glenn: Coming out of the off-season, I do cardio three times a week for 30 minute sessions. No more than dropping 300 calories -- just enough to maintain where my physique is at. I never reach over eight percent bodyfat all year. So that's just the consistency that I keep at with all my meals. Then during the in-season, I go to six days for cardio session; when I arrive at that 12 week mark before the show, it's seven days -- 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night. Then I target 400 to 500 calories every day as far as what I can burn with the cardio.
Suite101: What particular muscle groups are there that you have been refining a bit more since 2006?
Darron Glenn: My main thing is my legs -- it's always legs, legs, legs that the judges want to see now! So I've actually already put on a half an inch onto my quads, giving them more sweep in the front and in the back. So I've definitely improved on that area, and also calves, because I don't have the type of growth that some bodybuilders do on their calves -- I have higher calves, so I've built them up symmetrically to the rest of my upper body, but just putting on the legs is always going to be something that I strive for all the time.
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