Michal Krizo’s Chest and Biceps Workout 10 Days Out From the 2026 Mr. Olympia
UPLIFT IRON CLUBTen days out from the 2026 Mr. Olympia, Michal Krizo is still doing what made him one of the most visually extreme athletes in Men’s Open bodybuilding: training hard enough to keep the muscles full, but with the contest close enough that every rep has to serve a purpose.
In a September 18 training video, Krizo ran through a chest-and-biceps session built around machine pressing, fly work and curls. The workout itself is interesting, but the timing makes it more useful. This is not an offseason strength day. It is a late-prep hypertrophy session from a bodybuilder trying to preserve fullness, keep movement quality high and avoid creating recovery problems just before stepping onstage.
What Krizo did 10 days out
The reported exercise list was simple: pec-deck flyes, several machine-press angles, cable crossovers, single-arm preacher curls and seated EZ-bar curls. That is a compact menu compared with the sprawling sessions many lifters associate with elite bodybuilding.
The logic is easy to see. A pec deck lets Krizo load the chest through adduction without spending energy stabilizing a bar. Machine presses then give him a predictable pressing path at multiple torso angles. Cable crossovers return to a shortened-position squeeze before the session moves to biceps. On the arm side, the preacher curl stabilizes the upper arm and makes it difficult to turn the movement into a shoulder swing, while the seated EZ-bar curl gives him a bilateral movement that can be loaded without needing much setup.
That does not mean machines are automatically superior to free weights. It means they can be unusually useful when the goal is to create local muscular tension with a low coordination cost. Ten days before a contest, Krizo does not get bonus points for proving how much he can bench.
Why the exercise order makes sense
Starting with a fly before pressing is sometimes described as pre-exhaustion. The practical effect is that the chest is already warm and producing meaningful tension before the heavier compound work begins. For a bodybuilder who is lean, depleted and close to competition, that can make moderate pressing loads feel productive without requiring a maximal effort.
The multiple press angles also matter. Changing the machine setup slightly can alter shoulder position and the line of force without forcing a completely different skill. Krizo can accumulate chest volume while distributing stress rather than hammering one exact groove for every set.
Finishing the chest with cable crossovers is another low-complexity choice. There is little reason to chase a risky grinder at this point in prep. Cables make it easy to control tempo, keep tension on the pecs and stop a set when execution deteriorates.
The same principle appears in the biceps work. Single-arm preacher curls create a stable setup and make left-right differences obvious. The EZ-bar movement then lets both arms work together. The exercise selection is not exotic; the execution and context are what make it elite-level training.
Late-prep training, Olympia strategy and what lifters can borrow
One of the easiest mistakes recreational lifters make when watching Olympia prep is assuming the visible workout is a template to copy. Krizo is an advanced professional with years of accumulated muscle, highly practiced exercise technique and a contest-specific recovery plan. His needs ten days out are very different from those of someone trying to add their first ten kilograms of muscle.
What is transferable is the idea of matching training stress to recovery capacity. When calories are lower, sleep is disrupted or life stress is high, a session can still be productive without becoming a test of toughness. Stable exercises, controlled reps and stopping before technique collapses can preserve training quality when recovery resources are limited.
For ordinary hypertrophy training, the lesson is not to abandon barbells. It is to recognize that exercise stability is a tool. If a machine press lets you train the pecs hard with less joint irritation and less whole-body fatigue, it can earn a place beside free-weight pressing rather than replacing it.
Krizo enters the final stretch with a genuine opportunity to improve on his previous Olympia showings. Earlier in 2026 he finished second at the New York Pro and then won in Pittsburgh, giving him a strong competitive reference point before Las Vegas. The withdrawal of Hadi Choopan also changes the shape of the Open field, although it does not make the contest easy.
Krizo’s obvious strengths remain his enormous arms, round delts and dense overall look. The question at Olympia level is whether those strengths arrive with enough conditioning, balance and back detail to beat athletes who may not match him body part for body part but present a more complete package.
That is why a controlled late-prep session is more meaningful than a spectacular gym PR. The goal now is not to create new muscle in ten days. It is to arrive with the muscle he already built looking as full, separated and polished as possible.
A sensible chest-and-biceps session inspired by the structure could begin with two or three controlled sets of a pec deck, move to a stable press for three hard sets, add a second press angle for two or three sets, then finish the chest with cable flyes. Biceps could be trained with a preacher-curl variation and one bilateral curl. Most lifters do not need more complexity than that.
Progress still matters. Track reps, loads and execution over time. The machine is not doing the work for you; it is simply removing some variables so the target muscle can be the limiting factor. Keep enough range of motion to load the muscle, avoid turning every set into a partial-rep ego contest, and let the final reps get difficult without making every set technically ugly.
Krizo’s workout is a good reminder that advanced bodybuilding often looks less magical when you strip away the size of the athlete. The fundamentals remain recognizable: choose movements that fit your structure, create tension in the target muscle, accumulate enough hard work to stimulate adaptation and recover from it.
There is a reason late-prep bodybuilding often becomes less glamorous as the show gets closer. The closer an athlete is to stepping onstage, the less value there is in creating a huge amount of muscle damage. New tissue takes time to build. Soreness, joint irritation and systemic fatigue can appear immediately. That shifts the cost-benefit calculation toward exercises that let the athlete create hard local work without paying a large recovery bill.
Stable machines are useful here because they reduce the number of things that can fail first. On a free-weight press, the pecs may be capable of more work even after bracing, balance or shoulder stability starts to deteriorate. A machine fixes more of the movement path, which can make it easier to keep effort directed at the chest. That is not an argument that machines are always better; it is an argument that exercise choice should match the job of the session.
Krizo’s fly-first approach also deserves context. Pre-exhaustion is sometimes sold as a magic hypertrophy technique, but the simpler explanation is that an isolation movement can warm the pecs, establish a strong contraction and make later pressing feel more chest-dominant. The trade-off is obvious: fatigue the chest too much and pressing performance drops. Used intelligently, the fly is preparation. Used aggressively, it can simply make the rest of the workout worse.
The multiple press angles are another example of bodybuilding specificity. Changing the angle does not create an entirely different chest, but it can change shoulder position, range of motion and where the athlete feels the hardest part of the rep. An advanced bodybuilder has enough training history to know which setups keep tension where he wants it. For a beginner, constantly changing angles can make progression harder to measure. For Krizo, the variety can distribute stress while still keeping the session very focused.
The biceps portion follows the same low-noise theme. A single-arm preacher curl limits momentum, fixes the upper arm in place and makes it easy to compare sides. The seated EZ-bar curl then adds a bilateral movement that can be loaded without turning into a standing hip swing. With Krizo’s arms already one of his strongest body parts, the goal ten days out is not to discover a new exercise. It is to create a reliable stimulus and leave the gym healthy enough to pose, recover and train again.
That recovery point becomes more important as calories fall. Contest prep reduces the athlete’s margin for error because there is less incoming energy available for training, recovery and normal life. Sleep can also become more difficult as hunger rises and body fat gets very low. A session that would be easy to recover from in the offseason can become unnecessarily expensive late in prep. Good programming adapts to that reality instead of pretending recovery capacity never changes.
For a recreational lifter, the best lesson is to separate the exercise menu from the contest context. You can absolutely borrow the structure: one isolation movement, one or two stable presses, a cable movement, then two curl variations. But you should still train with a long-term progression plan. Add reps, load or better control over time. Krizo is preserving a contest physique; you are probably trying to build one.
A practical chest-and-biceps day could use two sets of pec deck, three sets of a machine or dumbbell press, two or three sets of a second angle and two sets of cable flyes. For biceps, three sets of preacher curls and two or three sets of another curl are enough for many people. The exact numbers should fit the rest of the training week, because the biceps also work during pulling and the chest shares fatigue with the front delts and triceps.
Effort should be calibrated too. There is no need to take every warm-up and isolation set to absolute failure. Keep early work controlled, then let the final working sets approach the point where another clean rep would be difficult. That produces a strong hypertrophy stimulus without turning every exercise into a technique breakdown. Near a contest, an elite athlete may be even more conservative if soreness or injury risk starts to outweigh any possible benefit.
Krizo’s competitive context makes the restraint more important. He has already shown in 2026 that his combination of arm size, shoulder roundness and overall density can win a major Open show. The remaining questions are about conditioning, balance, back presentation and how well the entire package holds together under Olympia lighting. None of those problems is solved by proving he can grind one more ugly rep ten days out.
The same idea applies to posing. A late-prep bodybuilder is not just recovering for another gym session; he also has to practice compulsory poses, manage cardio, keep steps or activity targets, handle travel and finish the final nutrition plan. Training exists inside that larger workload. The best workout is therefore the one that adds useful stimulus without compromising the other tasks that determine how the physique actually looks onstage.
Seen that way, Krizo’s workout is a good example of advanced training becoming more specific rather than more complicated. The exercise list is short. The equipment is stable. The target muscles are obvious. The sophistication is in knowing why those choices make sense now, how hard to push them and when to stop adding stress because the contest result matters more than the gym performance.
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