There’s a small habit in Italy that says a lot: when you order an espresso, they often bring you a tiny glass of water with it. It’s not the main thing you came for, but it makes the whole experience better. Training has the same idea.
Most people focus only on the “main” parts — the heavy sets, the big exercises, the intensity techniques. But real progress is often decided by the small details you do consistently: the thing that costs almost nothing, but adds quality to everything that comes after.
For me, that “glass of water” is the extra work that supports the session without stealing recovery — a short mobility drill for the shoulders, a controlled pump finisher to bring blood into the right area, a few minutes of activation to make sure the target muscle is actually doing the job. It’s not the part that looks impressive on camera, but it’s the part that keeps your training clean, your joints healthy, and your physique improving.
If you’re always chasing the biggest movement, you’ll miss the small pieces that keep you progressing long-term. So next time you train, don’t just ask “what’s the main lift?” Ask: what’s the small detail that makes today’s session better?
This past week had one clear theme for me: cutting noise. The closer you get to a big stage, the more you realize how many little distractions try to steal your output — conversations between sets, phones, filming, drifting mentally, even your own excuses. So I spent this week tightening the same thing from different angles: focus.
On Sculpting Sunday, I wrote about headphones — and why I use them as a tool. When I’m deep in a block, I don’t want my attention split into ten directions. The gym is loud. People mean well. Your brain still wanders. Headphones help me keep the session clean and deliberate, set after set.
Then Motivation Monday showed the other side of the same idea: training with a partner. A good partner doesn’t just bring energy — they keep you honest. They make it harder to coast. They help you stay sharp when the set gets heavy and your mind starts looking for the exit. Accountability is its own form of focus.
Tuesday Travelogue took that mindset somewhere completely different — Venice Beach and Muscle Beach — and I reflected on why that place still matters. Training outdoors, in public, under the sun, has a way of exposing everything: posture, control, intent. It’s also impossible to stand there and not feel the history — especially with Arnold’s shadow on the sand, and the connection that creates heading into the Arnold Classic.
By midweek, I leaned into a topic that’s everywhere right now: the difference between training to improve and training to entertain. I’m fully aware I live in both worlds — I post content too, and I’m not pretending I’m above it. But I wanted to be honest about the line. Cameras change sessions. They interrupt rhythm. They quietly turn work into performance. And if your goal is a pro-level physique, you have to protect the work.
We closed the week with two “quiet” posts that fit the same theme perfectly. Throwback Thursday was a London session — one of those gym moments where you’re surrounded by movement and noise, but you find a small pocket of calm and get the work done anyway. Friday Flex was a mirror check in Prague. Some people see a mirror and think vanity. I see feedback. It’s a way to stay objective, spot what’s improving, catch what’s lagging, and keep the target clear.
That’s the week in one sentence: less noise, more signal.
Next week, I’m going to argue that a journal is as important as any piece of bodybuilding gear — right up there with straps, a belt, even dumbbells. Because memory lies, and progress leaves clues when you write it down. I’ll also share a few subtle details that can quietly upgrade your workouts — small adjustments that change what you feel, what you recruit, and what you actually build.
Ci vediamo la prossima settimana! (See you next week!)
Pausing in a Prague gym for a quick physique check — just me, the mirror, and the work I’ve put in.
To some people, a mirror check looks like vanity. For me, it’s a tool.
The mirror is feedback I can’t get any other way in the moment. It helps me see what’s actually showing up from the training: whether my lats are flaring evenly, if my shoulders are staying level, how my waist is holding when I brace, and whether my posing is clean or sloppy when I’m tired. A good physique isn’t just built under the bar — it’s refined through awareness, and that means being willing to look closely.
These quick checks keep me honest. They highlight strengths I can lean into, and weaknesses I need to bring up — maybe a lagging upper chest, an imbalance side-to-side, or a pose that doesn’t showcase what I’ve earned. Catching that early guides what I do next: how I adjust my training, how I tweak volume, what I prioritize in the coming weeks, and how I practice posing so the progress actually reads on stage or on camera.
Working out in London, UK, in February, 2024. Between reps and sweat, there’s that brief moment to breathe, reset, and refocus. Even in a busy London gym, the mission stays simple: stay consistent, stay hungry.
If you missed it, I recently posted a Tuesday Travelogue where I described my thoughts on London.
I recently had the chance to sit down with The Mens Physique Show for an interview, and it was a great opportunity to talk through where I am right now — both in prep and in the bigger picture.
At the time of the interview, I was about nine weeks out from the Arnold Classic. Prep is always intense, but this phase has been especially focused because I’m bringing a bigger physique than most athletes in Men’s Physique. Being taller and more muscular can be an advantage, but it also means the margin for error is small. Everything has to stay balanced — shape, detail, conditioning, and presentation. The work becomes very precise.
One thing I talked about a lot is mindset. Bodybuilding teaches you quickly that you can’t rely on motivation. You have to rely on discipline. Setbacks happen. Stress happens. But the only thing that matters is how you respond. For me, the goal is always to improve the package and beat the man in the mirror. That’s the real competition.
We also spoke about my background in Italy and how different the culture is compared to places like the U.S. or the Middle East. In some countries, bodybuilding is much more established and supported. That’s one reason I’ve spent more time traveling and competing internationally, and why I see a future where I eventually build more opportunities abroad.
The interview wasn’t only about competing, though. I also shared some of the long-term projects I’m working on outside the stage — especially my interest in building something bigger in the wellness and fitness space. I want to create something that blends training, health, lifestyle, and real support for people, not just aesthetics.
Bodybuilding is what people see, but the deeper work is always what happens behind it: structure, habits, consistency, and long-term vision.
The fitness world has changed a lot in the last few years. Training used to be something you did quietly, for yourself, and maybe for a small circle of people who understood what you were chasing.
Now, training is also content. Cameras are everywhere. Every set can become a clip to be deposited in a social feed; every workout can become a “series”; and the gym itself has turned into a stage.
I understand it — I use social media too — but I also think it’s important to be honest about the difference between training to entertain and training to improve.
Because the truth is: those are not the same thing. Here’s why.
When your goal is to build a professional-level physique, training has to be treated like work.
It’s not about what looks impressive in a video or what gets the most comments. It’s about what produces results over time — not just for one week, but across months, years, and entire competitive seasons.
That mindset changes how you approach everything, from the way you structure your program to the way you recover and track progress.
How the Camera Changes the Session
One of the biggest problems with influencer-style training isn’t that it’s “wrong.” It’s that the camera quietly reshapes the purpose of the workout.
The moment you’re filming, you’re no longer only training — you’re also performing. You start thinking about angles, timing, lighting, and how to make the set look intense. Even if you don’t mean to, you talk more, you pause more, and you interrupt your rhythm. The workout becomes fragmented, and that changes your output.
A professional athlete doesn’t have the luxury of treating training like a performance. When I’m in prep, especially, every session has a job to do. I’m not there to create a moment. I’m there to create progress.
The Difference Is What You’re Training For
A lot of influencer training is built around what’s exciting to watch. There’s constant variation, new techniques every week, workouts designed to look brutal, and an endless search for the “next thing.”
Sometimes it’s entertaining, and sometimes there are good ideas inside it. But entertainment and effectiveness aren’t the same. If you change everything too often, you lose your ability to measure progress, because you’re never repeating enough of the same stimulus to know what’s actually working.
Professional training is usually simpler than people expect, because it’s focused. Most of the time, the best physiques are built through the basics done extremely well, repeated long enough for the body to adapt. The difference is not the exercise selection. The difference is execution, consistency, and the ability to apply the plan without constantly reinventing it.
Why My Training Can Look “Boring” From the Outside
Some people see my training and think it looks too basic: endless rows, presses, raises, controlled reps, and a lot of attention to form.
But that’s exactly the point. I’m not trying to surprise my body every session. I’m trying to force adaptation by giving it the right stimulus, consistently, and then adjusting only when the feedback tells me to. The more advanced you get, the more you realize that progress usually comes from precision, not chaos.
The Goal Isn’t a Better Clip — It’s a Better Physique
I respect anyone who uses social media to help people get into training. That’s not the issue. The issue is when people confuse content with competence, or when they start training to be watched instead of training to improve.
If your goal is to build a serious physique, you have to be willing to do what works even when it’s not exciting, not trendy, not photogenic, and not impressive to strangers.
Venice Beach has a way of announcing itself before you even reach the sand. The air tastes like salt and sunscreen. The light is sharp. Thumping music spills out of passing cars and portable speakers, then fades as quickly as it arrives. People move through it with purpose or with performance — sometimes both — and the boardwalk feels like a rolling collage of characters.
Let me tell you more about this special place and what it meant to me when I last visited.
Venice Beach is one of those places where you can watch completely different worlds sharing the same stretch of pavement: skaters carving close to the edge of control, artists selling prints in the sun, tourists drifting in packs, and lifters walking toward the outdoor platforms with the quiet focus of someone heading to work.
Venice has always had that mix. It was built to be a little theatrical. Even the geography feels dramatic: ocean on one side, the city stacked right behind it, and a constant flow of bodies moving through the seam between them. Needless to say, it’s a great spot to people watch.
For strength athletes like me, the magnet is Muscle Beach — a small patch of outdoor equipment that carries an outsized reputation.
The story starts earlier than most people realize. In the 1930s and 40s, “Muscle Beach” referred to an athletic culture on the Southern California coast where gymnasts and acrobats performed in public: hand balancing, tumbling, rings, feats of coordination and control that drew crowds the way street performances do today.
Over time, training equipment showed up, along with bodybuilders looking to improve their strength. By the 1950s and 60s, the beach had become a stage for physical culture — not bodybuilding as we think of it now, but the broader idea that a body could be engineered through training.
The outdoor setting mattered. Everything happened in full view. There was no climate control, and no curated lighting. Just sun, heat, wind, and an audience that wandered by out of curiosity and stayed for the spectacle.
The 1970s are what sealed the myth. That decade turned Venice into a headquarters for modern bodybuilding: Gold’s Gym nearby, the beach a public showroom. It’s impossible to talk about that era without mentioning the G.O.A.T. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He trained there during the years when he was becoming Arnold — the version of him that would take bodybuilding into pop culture, then out of the sport entirely and into a larger American story.
Around him were other defining figures: Franco Columbu (who hailed from my home country, Italy), Frank Zane, and the wider cast that made those years feel like a formative moment in time rather than a normal training scene.
You can still feel traces of it, despite changes that have occurred. The equipment may look different today, but not the atmosphere around the training area.
People don’t wander over the same way they do at a normal park. They slow down. They look longer. They watch sets. They try to understand what they’re seeing. In a way, it’s not just an outdoor gym, but performance art.
When I think back on my own visit, what stays with me is how exposed everything feels. Outdoors, the body reads differently. You notice posture and movement patterns. You notice who controls the weight and who survives it. You notice the difference between someone who’s training with intention and someone chasing attention.
My past trip to Venice Beach is on my mind as I prepare for the upcoming Arnold Classic.
The Arnold carries its own gravity because it’s tied to a specific lineage — the idea of bodybuilding as something earned through years of repetition, structure, and patience. The name on the show connects directly back to those Venice years, when the sport was still defining itself in public, long before it became an industry of highlight clips and fast edits. When I’m deep into prep, I think about places like Muscle Beach as reminders of where the standards came from: bodies built slowly, and shown without excuses.
Venice itself is larger than bodybuilding, of course. It has the beach lifestyle, the art, the odd corners, the constant motion. But Muscle Beach sits inside that chaos like a steady pulse: people showing up, loading plates, tracking progress, doing the same unglamorous work the sport has always required.
And that’s why it’s worth writing about in a Travelogue. Venice is a postcard location, and a living chapter of fitness history. You can walk through it in an afternoon and still leave with the sense that a lot of stories have been, or will be written there — in sweat, under the sun, with the ocean on one side and the crowd passing by on the other.
There’s a different kind of energy when someone steps in and shares the work with you. A good training partner changes the session immediately. The pace tightens up. The standard goes up. You stop letting yourself drift through reps.
For me, the biggest value is honesty. When you train alone, it’s easy to convince yourself you’re being “smart” when you’re really just choosing comfort. A partner sees the difference. They know when you have one more clean rep, and they know when your form is about to break. That keeps the work productive instead of messy.
A strong partner also keeps you safer when intensity climbs. They can help you stay locked into the right positions, keep the tempo under control, and assist when you’re deep in a set and the muscle is fading. That’s when the best growth reps happen — the ones you wouldn’t reach on your own because you’d shut it down early.
And there’s a mindset benefit too. This sport can get narrow when you’re deep into routine. Training with someone who brings good energy makes the grind feel lighter and makes the time go by faster. You leave the gym sharper, more motivated, and more confident — because you didn’t just “get the session done.” You earned it.
Some people think wearing headphones in the gym is antisocial — like you’re shutting everyone out or being “too serious.” But for me, headphones aren’t about attitude. They’re about focus.
When I’m in the middle of prep or pushing a training block hard, the gym isn’t a place to multitask. It’s a place to execute. One distracted set can turn into sloppy form, lost tension, and a workout that looks busy but doesn’t actually move you forward.
Headphones help me stay locked in. They create a boundary between me and everything happening around me — conversations, noise, interruptions, even the temptation to drift mentally between sets. That doesn’t mean I’m disrespectful. If someone says hello, I’ll always show respect. But when the set starts, I’m not there to perform socially. I’m there to train.
If you struggle with consistency or intensity, try this: put your headphones on, build your own bubble, and treat focus like part of the workout.
This past week was all about small adjustments — the kind that don’t look dramatic on the surface, but add up when you repeat them.
On Sculpting Sunday, I shared a lunge variation I’ve been using when I want more control and better mechanics. Loading a plate high on the back changes the entire movement. Your posture cleans up immediately, your core switches on, and you can’t hide weak spots. You feel right away why it works.
Monday’s Motivation Monday came straight from a hard session. There’s a point in training where effort stops being automatic and you have to decide whether you’re willing to stay in it. That’s what Push Until It’s Real was about — that moment where the work either sharpens you or exposes you.
Tuesday was a change of pace with a new Tuesday Travelogue, this time about my past travels to London. London has a way of keeping you alert. Everything moves fast, but not randomly. The city demands attention, planning, and awareness — and I actually like that. It’s a place that makes you respect structure, because without it, the day gets away from you quickly.
Midweek, I shared a long-form post on how I train shoulders. Delts are one of the easiest muscle groups to train poorly, especially when ego gets involved. That post was about how I manage load, range of motion, and intensity so the shoulders keep growing without unnecessary wear and tear. Nothing flashy — just what’s worked for me over time.
The week ended with two quieter moments. Throwback Thursday went back to Spain in 2023 — saltwater, stillness, and the kind of recovery you don’t rush.
And Friday Flex: Stay Loose was a reminder that staying mobile isn’t optional. Stretching, movement, and taking care of how your body feels day to day matters just as much as the sets you log.
That was the week. Nothing too fancy — just showing up, making subtle adjustments, and keeping things moving in the right direction.
More coming next week — including why I view headphones as a critical piece of training equipment, a Tuesday Travelogue from a historic spot in California, why I train like a professional, not an influencer, and of course a dose of motivating photos.
This is one of those moments I build into my sessions on purpose. Taking time to stretch between sets helps everything settle back into place — hips, back, shoulders, whatever just took the most work. When the body stays tight for too long, movement gets shorter and mechanics start to slip. You can still lift, but the quality drops, and the risk of injury goes up.
A few focused stretches bring the range back. You feel more control, better balance, and cleaner positions when you step into the next set. It’s also a chance to slow the pace mentally, refocus, and stay connected to how the body is responding instead of just pushing blindly.
Training hard matters. Training in a way that keeps your body working well matters just as much.
Relaxing in Spain, September, 2023. There’s something about the ocean here that slows everything down in the best way. The water is warm, the salt sits on your skin, and after days of training, travel, and tight schedules, your body finally gets permission to release some tension. Muscles that felt dense start to soften. Breathing gets deeper without you thinking about it. The noise — physical and mental — fades a little at a time, replaced by the sound of lapping waves.
Moments like this matter. Training breaks the body down, but places like this help put it back together. The ocean has a grounding effect that’s hard to replicate anywhere else. You step in carrying fatigue, stress, and noise, and you step out feeling clearer, steadier, and more present. It’s a reminder that recovery doesn’t always come from another tool or technique — sometimes it comes from letting nature do what it’s always done best.
Shoulder training has always been one of the most technical sessions of the week for me. Delts are a small muscle group, but they respond incredibly well when you train them with precision, control, and smart intensity — not just heavy weights.
Today I want to walk you through the core principles I use when I train shoulders. They come from experience, from learning, and from constantly refining how I move so my shoulders grow without unnecessary stress.
Shoulder training is one of the sessions I treat with the most respect. Delts are small, easy to bully with weight, and even easier to miss if the rep turns into a joint-and-momentum thing. When it’s done well, shoulders grow fast and stay healthy. When it’s done sloppy, you feel it in your neck, your elbows, your irritability — everywhere except the muscle you wanted.
The biggest shift for me over the years has been learning to shape intensity. I still like heavy work. I still want a stimulus that forces adaptation. The difference is that the session has a plan: I’ll open with something heavier to set the tone and load the delt fibers, then move into moderate work where the pump and the rep quality start to matter more than the numbers. Toward the end, the load usually comes down again, because fatigue has a way of pulling the rep into the wrong places. Lighter weight keeps the line of tension clean.
My warm-up is part of that plan. Those early sets are where I “find” the movement for the day — how the shoulder is tracking, what the joint feels like, how stable the scapula is, and where I’m feeling the work. After my main working sets, I almost always do a back-off set. That’s where I slow the tempo down, tighten the path, and chase the exact feeling I want in the delt. A lot of shoulder growth comes from that set.
Triceps takeover is one of the most common problems I see in pressing and raising patterns. When the rep starts too deep, or the elbow drops into a range where the arms want to do the work, the shoulder loses its job quickly. I keep my range and elbow path consistent, and I pay attention to where the tension is living. If I feel the rep shifting into the triceps, I adjust the start position and bring the movement back into the delt.
As the set gets harder, I’m fine using partials — as long as they’re controlled and intentional. Shoulders don’t always benefit from chasing a deep stretch under fatigue. Partials let me keep constant tension on the delt, stay in the strongest line, and build a massive pump without turning the end of the set into survival reps. I’ll often start with full reps, then finish with shorter, cleaner reps once the muscle is fading.
One thing I don’t do is grind through ugly patterns. If the rep stops feeling clean, I stop. I reset my position. Then I go again. That sounds basic, but it’s the difference between teaching your body the movement you want and reinforcing a compensation you’ll have to undo later.
A technique that’s helped me a lot is mixing small holds with short rep clusters: hold the contraction, hit two or three reps, release, then repeat. It forces control. It forces attention. It tells you immediately if your posture and angles are right. It also builds a mind–muscle connection that carries into the heavier sets.
At the end of shoulder sessions, I’ll usually do a few minutes of easy mobility or stability work. A little blood flow, a little scap control, a little posture reset. It keeps the joints happy and the next session better.
Strong shoulders come from repeated, boring discipline: clean setup, consistent rep path, controlled negatives, and the willingness to lower the load the moment the rep starts drifting. That’s how you build delts that show up from every angle — and keep showing up.
To see my demonstrating these principles in a gym training session, check out the following YouTube video.
London doesn’t ease you in. The moment you step outside, it feels like the city is already mid-stride — people moving with purpose, streets layered with noise and direction, a constant sense that something is happening two blocks away and you’re either part of it or you’re in the way.
It’s intense without being chaotic. It’s organized pressure. The Underground is a perfect example: fast, crowded, efficient, slightly unforgiving. You learn quickly to pay attention, to move with the flow, to stay alert. And even above ground, the rhythm is the same — commuters cutting through side streets, cafés full by 8 a.m., taxis and buses constantly weaving through the streets.
But the best part is how much history is sitting right next to modern life. You can walk past a glass building that looks futuristic, turn the corner, and you’re staring at stone that’s been there for centuries.
London has this way of making time feel stacked on top of itself. There are layers of its Roman roots, medieval streets, imperial museums, and wartime scars. It’s a huge global city that never stops refreshing itself, while still preserving evidence of its past.
The culture here is its own thing too — a little guarded at first, but sharp. People aren’t loud in a performative way. The humor is (delightfully) dry. The conversations move quickly. There’s a kind of understatement that I respect.
London doesn’t need to sell itself to you. It just exists, and you start to see the personality in the details — pubs that feel like living rooms, markets that are half chaos and half tradition, neighborhoods that change character street by street.
And food in London surprises people. You expect British basics, and you’ll find them (fish and chips, anyone?). But what really defines the city is how international it is. You can eat anything here, done well, because the world lives here. One night it’s Middle Eastern, the next it’s Indian, the next it’s sushi, and it still feels normal. London isn’t one cuisine. It’s all of the cuisines.
From a training perspective, London is a good city for discipline. It forces you to build structure. You don’t float through your day here; you plan, you move, you execute. Even a simple gym session feels earned because you’ve already worked just to get to it. And that kind of environment can sharpen you. It pushes you to stay consistent, even when life is moving fast around you.
That’s one of my favorite things about London: it doesn’t soften you. It refines you.
And if you’re here with a goal — whether it’s training, work, or chasing something bigger — London has a way of making you respect your own standard.
Every rep tests me. But the last one is different.
That last rep is the moment where your body is already trying to negotiate. Your breathing gets loud. Your face changes. Everything in you wants to rack it and move on. And that’s exactly why it matters — because it shows you what you do when it stops feeling good.
I’m not chasing pain for the sake of pain. I’m chasing that clean finish: staying in position, keeping the tension where it belongs, and getting the rep even when my brain is screaming to quit. That’s where confidence comes from. Not from the easy sets. From the ones you earn. And those last reps are the ones that cause your muscle to grow.
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