Snap, I’ll agree that experienced folks here have about as good advice as anyone. And I’ve really been burnt by nuts who insist their program will make me Mr Olympia.
Spock, I KNOW loads of people would have given up long before now. I may have my faults, but the one insult I could never stand was “quitter”.
Harry, thanks. It is amazingly rare to find advice based on whether you gain easy or hard, everyone keeps thinking we’re all the same, frustrates the hell out of me. Ran across one good web post recently, the guy is a trainer who described different types of gainers (easy, medium, hard) and had some good advice for someone like me. Will post it at some point.
Cotenbroek, I started lifting because I was a goddamn skinny, puny, ghastly excuse for a man. Boy Scout hikes, the other boys could outwalk me and I couldn’t keep up. Phys Ed, I was always the last one picked for teams. Not enough strength to get a basketball up into the hoop. Couldn’t hit a baseball more than 50 feet. College, had to do 3 chinups to pass PE. Took me 5 minutes.
Hit the weights in college. Four years, and was just as thin and weak as started. Hit commercial gyms. Paid for training. Zilch. Started bench press, took 10 years of hard, struggling work to go from 95 lbs to 115. When started squatting, could only handle broomstick, any weight buried me. Deadlifts, took months of training before finally prying 185 off the floor.
Getting the picture?
One bad deadlift isn’t getting me down. More like 1 thousand. I have decades of memories of frustration, helpless straining, and being crushed under weights that other use for warmup. I’m convinced I have PTSD from all that. I must fight it. I must believe that there is hope, however remote. I must keep going, even if every fiber in my being is screaming it’s hopeless.
