"You practice Flex" - 4 x Arnold Classic champion Flex Wheeler on receiving posing advice from Lee Labrada

Bodybuilding legend Flex Wheeler is revered as one of the best bodybuilders to ever grace the stage. He gained legendary status in the game after winning a total of four Arnold Classic titles and, most-importantly, overcoming hurdle after hurdle throughout his life.

Flex, nicknamed 'The Sultan of Symmetry', competed for the top spot with incredible esthetics. However, he had to overcome the problems he was facing while posing.

In a recent episode of Olympia TV, Wheeler described how another legendary figure in the sport, Lee Labrada, helped him improve his posing:

"I remember in 93 competing with Lee Labrada on stage and I was literally hiding behind Robby Robinson because I was exhausted. I was kneeling down, hiding behind Robby, he’s staring at Lee Labrada, and I asked him, I said, ‘how does he do that,’ and he’s tough, ‘what do you mean Flex,’ he goes, ‘I don’t know go ask him.’"

"I go, ‘how do you do that,’ and he goes, ‘how do I do what Flex,’ I go, ‘how do you hold the poses, you never get tired you don’t breathe in between,’ – he goes, ‘You practice Flex.’"

Flex Wheeler competed in the era of esthetics, where beauty and symmetry were seen in high regard. Wheeler then recalled how Labrada asked him to spend more time practicing poses:

"I’m like, ‘huh,’ he’s like, ‘you know how you go to the gym and spend all the time training, well you have to spend more time posing than training. That was the era back then. That’s where we came from."

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"You have to have that body type" - Flex Wheeler on the intricacies of posing routines

The beauty of bodybuilding lies in the differences between athletes' physiques. This is also what makes judging incredibly difficult.

Speaking about posing on the podcast, Flex Wheeler added that the poses are specific to individual athletes:

"Just because a pose looks good on you, doesn’t mean it’s going to look good on other people. You have to have that body type."

According to Flex Wheeler, athletes need to play to their strengths. A symmetrical athlete needs to showcase his complete physique, while a mass monster needs to go for the 'most-muscular' poses. He said:

"When you have a physique that’s extremely muscular, you don’t come out and do all these poses, like la-la, like I do, you come out and you do these beastly poses, like Bob said, I want to see you do a hundred most musculars. It has to fit with your body."

Samson Dauda was pitched as the front-runner to beat Hadi Choopan at the Olympia later this year. Wheeler added that Dauda needs to tweak his poses to show his strengths:

"For Samson, I don’t know, because his legs are so powerful. I think the way he hits it [front double biceps], maybe he should twist it a tiny bit."

As is the case with any sport, each athlete learns from the other one. Flex Wheeler eloquently put this as he described how he learned from his peers.

"We all emulate from people before us, right, I didn’t learn anything, I stole something from everybody I looked at before me. We just emulate it, change it, and make it our own."