Most
of my pieces on this site have been science based and are there to offer
information on strength training and the benefits of weight lifting in
general. This month I decided to
change things up a bit and give some information on what I’ve been going
through with my training over the last 10 months or so compared to the other 8
years I’ve been “training”. I am
also taking a physics course so researching topics is at a standstill. Hopefully by publishing something
different I can motivate some of you through this avenue if science isn’t your
thing or just need something new.
BS – BEFORE SQUATS
I’ve always enjoyed “working
out”. I love sports and that is
how I originally got into weight lifting.
I played most sports offered at school, but no matter what sport I
played I was always the little guy.
Football I was too skinny and too slow. In soccer I was a goof ball out there trying to compete with
speedsters. Track? Psh neeext! Baseball? Boooring. I found my calling in basketball. I wasn’t the fastest or tallest, but I
had decent quickness, good ball handling and could pass better than most kids
so I was able to hang with the big guys for a while. That was until sophomore year of high school. I was 128 lbs dripping wet and
was getting pushed around and left in the dust with varsity. It was humiliating and
embarrassing. My whole life I was
one of the “better” guys on the court who thought he just wasn’t given a
chance. But once I started playing
I realized there was a big difference.
Sure I did some things better and some things worse than the other
players, but really what kept me back was my size. Overall as I look back I wasn’t too worried about basketball
in the long run. Deep down I knew basketball wasn’t my future. But what I didn’t know was how far back
physically I was compared to other students. Hell, I couldn’t bench half my body weight at 16. It was my “BS” days (before
squats). Days filled with
unlimited soda, McDonalds and size small t-shirts that fit like larges. I needed a revelation. I needed to get stronger.
Cue in Bobby Biceps
Sophomore year everything changed. I started researching weight lifting
(mostly broscience stuff) and training with a high school buddy of mine. We were tired of being slow, weak and
not huge and veiny! We wanted to squat the weight of Rhode Island and bench
press Alaska. There was a
basketball coach who would take us under his wing and bring us into the weight
room instead of having us run an exorbitant amount of miles (misplaced for
basketball). We spent our time
benching, rowing, half-squatting (proper form didn’t come until years later)
and barbell curls. We were
determined. Determined to get
better and stronger. It was my
“enlightened” period and I loved it.
We didn’t know what the hell we were doing, but we didn’t care. It was weights. We were just training to get stronger
and we read any bro magazine (muscle and “fiction”/flex etc) we could and
listened to every tidbit of information that bobby biceps gave us at our local
gym. It wasn’t the best, but it
got us started.
The Dark Ages
Once the enlightenment ended, I
ended up in my dark ages.
Enlightenment was great! I
was training hard and eating a lot during my first few years of lifting. I graduated high school around 140
lbs. It wasn’t a huge improvement,
but to me it was something especially looking back at my lifting routine and
eating habits. But I hit a wall
around 20 years old. At this point
I was about 165 lbs, but not getting a whole lot better. I was stuck. I didn’t research as much as I should have and I got sucked
into the media and workout “ideals”.
I stopped training heavy and started “sculpting” my body (gag). I thought “hey! Jay Cutler and Ronnie
Coleman do all this stuff. Why
can’t I?” By stuff, I meant lifting
lighter weight and starting workout sessions with crap like cable flyes to
“stretch the pecs and get blood into the muscle”, a lot of terms that get thrown around by eggheads who don’t
really know what they’re doing.
Now, I’m not saying this training doesn’t work. I’ve seen people stick to it and they
get results and are in pretty damn good shape. But most of them had a strength background or muscle that I
just didn’t have. I hadn’t opened
my eyes to what the problem really was.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t killing myself in the gym because God knows I
was! It was that my foundation was
completely off base. I was letting
the magazines and fitness “gurus” tell me what I needed. That all you need to grow muscle was to
pound a protein shake and eat copious amounts of protein (not that these are
untrue) and I’d grow as big as a house by following this program. That this new supplement was made for
YOU and take this officially researched supp and feel your muscle grow! We’ve all heard it. We’ve all done it. We’ve all believed something that
proved to be untrue. There’s
nothing wrong with that. Mistakes
happen. People are misled, but
damn it if I wasn’t fed up with it all.
Fed up with being the little guy.
Disappointed that I had a degree in exercise science and I couldn’t push
myself to the limits where I knew I could go. Damn you magazines and supplement companies for pushing crap
that never helped me. All the
touched up photos and bogus “before and after shots”. I was fed up with it all. Until about October 2013.
Rediscovery
At this point I was approximately 170 lbs. Not too bad and throughout my dark ages
(20-24 years old) I had stumbled upon a little bit of muscle. Nothing world changing, but enough that
I was proud of. A great friend of
mine kept asking me why I didn’t follow a program that is geared more toward
strength. I kept saying that I didn’t
want to be “fat” or that “I had it all under control” etc, but he had a
point. I knew the benefits of
strength training and had used it dozens of times with my own personal training
clients, but when it came to my own program I never looked at myself
objectively. I would change my
workouts constantly and not track my eating and I wasn’t being honest with
myself in the gym. Finally I
bought in. I told him that he
could make my program and I would follow it to the “T” and bust my ass. The first few months were brutal. Not for the reasons you think. They were a little boring and not as excruciating
as what I had been doing. The
weights were fairly light and I was confused. I kept asking “when am I going to lift heavy? I thought this was strength
training?” He was like Yoda or Mr.
Miyagi. He kept telling me to be
patient, that “the force was strong with this one”, ok not really the last one,
but you get it. It tested my
patience, but I knew that I had tried everything else and “to get places you’ve
never been before you have to try things you’ve never done before”. I was in it for the long haul. After a few months I started noticing
changes. My body actually started
changing. My lifting numbers were
increasing each week and I was building on the moment each month. My dead lift numbers doubled. Squat numbers (at full depth) almost
doubled. Benching was never my
best exercise due to my monkey arms, but even that improved. From when I started to this point
(about 8 months) I gained 30 lbs (170-200) and obviously that’s not all muscle,
but those are changes that I had never seen before. I started doing more research and applying my degree and
learning more each week along with improving my body and training. I got my wife training in a similar way
(a little different because she has different goals) and she has seen great
improvements in her lifts as well as composition. It all changed and I worked my ass off. That is what changed. I got smarter (minus grammar) and
learned how to work hard and stay dedicated. It’s something I think we all can learn. It isn’t magic. It isn’t a pill. It isn’t an article, luck or anything
like that. It’s hard damn work and
I say anybody can do it. It just
takes effort and a plan.
Conclusion
So what’s the point to this article? Well, essentially it is
to try and get you to look at your current program, lifestyle, etc and analyze
your goals. Why are you working
out? Are you working out? Or are
you training for something? That
should be the point. Always trying
to better yourself and keep improving on your goals. We all know that person that does Herbalife or P90X or functional training and that’s great
for them. But it’s not getting to
the root of the problem. Everyone
can benefit from strength and not just in the weight room or on the scale. Challenges were put in front of me (in
the form of weights) and I overcame those challenges. People do it all the time and it’s great! Overcoming those challenges puts into
perspective that anything is possible with enough work. It just takes dedication. It’s on you to learn. It’s on you to get better. I hope you can use these articles and
utilize them on your journey to whatever goals you have. It’s all in your hands. Ready?....... GO!
