A New Pec'ing Order

He may be the youngest pro in the IFBB, but USA champ Cody Montgomery remains undaunted. Here, he shares the Chest Regimen he’s using to get ready for his next face-off.

- Michael Berg

The Lone Star State’s Cody Montgomery rode that fearless spirit into Columbus, OH, on March 5 for a high-noon style showdown with some of the meanest hombres the IFBB had to offer. There, he stared down 11 other men with 46 pro titles among them, including a few who have been competing since the days before the 22-year-old Montgomery was born.

The ultimate victor that night was the enigmatic sharpshooter Kai Greene, who now goes into the Mr. Olympia as five-time champ—and Phil Heath’s most dangerous adversary. Meanwhile, Montgomery finished 10th, perhaps bruised but far from broken from the fray.

“It was an honor to be onstage with all of them, and I learned a lot from it—it made me hungrier to go back to a show like that in a few years and try to better myself,” Montgomery says, looking back on the event from the vantage point of a searing Texas Tuesday in July. “I’m a competitive guy, so it was different because I had never lost as an amateur. Of course, I trained to win, but I’m a realist at the same time and knew it would be tough— losing was uncharted territory I hadn’t been in, but I feel like I got the experience I need to improve to come back a lot better. I know exactly what I need to do.”

What he needs to do, he says, is to add size, with a slew of new cuts and detail that will give him the bullets to go toe to toe with any of the top IFBB pros on the planet. These days, Montgomery is holed up in The Muscle Factory in San Antonio, where he’s dedicating the next year to his improvement plan, taking aim at the summer contest season in 2017.

UP & OVER