Alessandro Cavagnola's Blog

One of my favorite moments in my latest YouTube video didn’t happen during a heavy set or a physique check.

It happened during a conversation.

While training at Muscleworks in England, I met up with my friend and mentor, Sav, to discuss the feedback I had recently received from judges at the Arnold Sports UK competition. They told me something I already suspected: my front poses are one of my strongest assets. My chest, shoulders, and overall front presentation immediately catch the eye.

But bodybuilding is a sport of balance.

When I turn around, the judges want to see more thickness and three-dimensionality in my back. My back isn’t weak, but at the highest levels of bodybuilding, you’re no longer chasing weaknesses. You’re chasing harmony. Small differences can separate first place from fifth.

That’s why I wanted Sav’s perspective.

One of the things I’ve always respected about him is that he doesn’t immediately jump to “train harder.” He thinks about why a muscle is developing the way it is.

During our conversation, he pointed out something I hadn’t fully considered. My lower traps naturally dominate many of my pulling movements. Because they’re so strong, they tend to take over, preventing other areas of my back from doing as much of the work as they should.

His advice wasn’t simply to add more volume. It was to become more intentional.

Instead of thinking about “training my back” as one large muscle group, he encouraged me to think about the individual muscles that make up the back and choose exercises that allow each one to do its job. He also emphasized minimizing momentum and focusing on controlled movement, allowing the target muscle — not body movement or leverage — to perform the work.

One comparison he made really stayed with me.

He described building muscle like reading a book.

You don’t skip from the first page to the last and expect to understand the story. You move through it page by page. Muscle development works the same way. Fiber by fiber. Rep by rep. Workout by workout. Some chapters come more easily because of genetics. Others require much more patience.

That perspective resonated with me because bodybuilding has taught me that progress is almost never dramatic in the moment. It comes from making hundreds of small decisions correctly over a very long period of time.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned throughout my career is that asking for advice isn’t a sign of weakness.

I coach people myself, and I genuinely enjoy helping others avoid mistakes that took me years to understand. But that doesn’t mean I stop looking for guidance in my own journey.

Some of the best athletes in the world continue surrounding themselves with knowledgeable people because they understand that experience is something you never outgrow. No matter how much you’ve accomplished, someone else may notice something you’ve overlooked or explain a concept in a way that changes your entire approach.

That’s exactly what happened during this conversation.

As I continue my road towards building a better physique, my goal isn’t simply to train harder. It’s to train smarter, stay open to learning, and keep refining the details that separate a good physique from the best physique I’m capable of building.

If you’d like to watch the full discussion with Sav — and see the training session that went along with it — you can find it in my latest YouTube video.