I first got back into lifting weights properly when we moved to our current house, which has an integral garage.
Soon after we moved in, I started messing around on a pull-up bar and doing a few dips here and there. Things moved quickly after that and before long there was a squat rack crowding out the lawnmower and piles of free weights all over the floor.
I made the typical rebound gains but before long things started to stagnate and so started looking on the internet for guidance. I quickly gravitated towards the T-Nation articles and the CrossFit phenomenon because they were publishing the most material and gathering the biggest tribes.
Although neither really hit the spot completely for me (even while I was swimming at university, I was always a pull-up, dip and pistol obsessive rather than a powerlifter or functional strength fanatic), I surfed those waves for quite a long time, reading and learning what I could.
Limiting diminishing returns
However, I believe in the law of diminishing returns. I don’t think that reading the same book, article bank or even type of training material over and over again will give me anywhere near the same improvement as reading something completely different.
So recently, I’ve been reading whatever I can get my hands on that purports to be pure bodybuilding. (Yes, I know that T-Nation has gone back to its roots recently but the majority of the articles still aren’t really about bodybuilding, if you’re brutally honest).
But reading about bodybuilding doesn’t mean I’m suddenly going to start training in a completely different way or that I’m going to ignore what I’ve learned over the last four years. I’m just looking to expand my knowledge base.
The wondrous variety of strength sports
One of my favourite lines in the now-superceded film Robin Hood: Price of Thieves was spoken by the legend that is Morgan Freeman. In response to a simple question about his different appearance, Freeman’s character replies “because Allah loves wondrous variety”. I feel that way about the pursuit of strength.
I don’t subscribe to the view that you have to nail your colours to the mast and become a purist. I think that sort of thought-process is the mark of new converts and people who drink too much kool-aid. I don’t like to dampen their enthusiasm but it doesn’t really wash with me.
Yes, I think strongman is cool. Yes, I like the idea of using kettlebells and I subscribe to all the kettlebell blogs I can find. Yes, I am a bodyweight strength fanatic and I have wanted to do a one-arm chin since I was about five. Yes, I really like the powerlifts and if I ever deadlift 500lbs I will cry like baby. Yes, I’m reading everything I can find about bodybuilding. No, I don’t want to choose one or the other.
And how cool does this look, anyway?
Venice Muscle Beach, by RightIndex
While I’ve been reading, I’ve come to the realisation that bodybuilders, or successful ones at least, are very good at a number of things and I admire them for that. Here are three of them:
Three reasons I admire bodybuilders
- Delayed gratification – in today’s strange society, I see many people who have never had to worry about delayed gratification. In the Western world, particularly in the US, it seems you can have pretty much whatever you want, whenever you want it. And if you can’t afford it right now then there’s probably someone somewhere who will loan you the money. But bodybuilders know that when it comes to building muscle, there is no short-cut. There are limits on just how fast the body can pack on lean mass and those limits change depending on your training age, your chronological age, your work capacity and just how much you are physically capable of eating. From what I’ve read so far, it seems that successful bodybuilders go in for the long haul and think in terms of years, not months. They are avatars to the deity of delayed gratification and walking embodiments of patience.
- Self-control - the key to progressing in bodybuilding seems to be consistently practicing the same basic principles again and again for very long periods of time. Eventually, the body changes and is moulded into the shape envisaged. This requires intense focus on getting things right all the time and having the self-control not to move from the diet plan or the training plan. If I’m dieting, I find it fairly straightforward to focus on sticking to the diet plan but I freely confess that I have training ADD and sticking to one plan for more than three weeks is purgatory for me. I have huge respect for people who have the necessary self-control to hold themselves to a programme long enough to see if it will work.
- Self-esteem – bodybuilding has had a pretty rough time in the last few years. Since the decline of Arnold on the big screen and the rise of the mass-monsters in the big competitions, the general public has moved away from the big guys. On top of that, the pervading trend on the internet is of functional strength and general fitness, with a side order of powerlifting. To pursue a sport so completely at odds with what everyone else is talking about and doing needs strong self-esteem that isn’t rocked by what other people think.
Watch out for a few more posts on bodybuilding as I get my head around this strange new area that I have started reading about!
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Tags: bodybuilding4 Comments
Chris, read: “Muscle – Confessions of an unlikely bodybuilder” by Sam Fussell. One of the best books on the subject, very funny and very insightful at the same time. Its the bodybuilding book I would like to have written.
Thanks for the recommendation, Rob. I will add it to my reading list. Watch out for a review in the next couple of months!
It’s not too late (or early!) to write your memoirs, you know…
One day… but I’d really like to write my Fathers life story: Born in Austria, watched his family murdered by the Nazi’s, survived a death camp, joined the Russian army, then the British army, spied in East Germany, stole a merchant bank, went bankrupt twice, lived as a farmer, became a hotel porter, built up a big plumbers merchants had two families on the go at the same time and died in his early 70′s refusing pain relief from cancer screaming in pain having lived on for 4 days after the doctors said he would die.
Wow. Sometimes life is stranger than fiction.
As Josh said, though, in order to write your own story, you have to write the stories of your parents…