CT & Professor X's Discussion

Training Bodybuilding
41

Transplanted post:

Professor X wrote:
Also, as far as this:

[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:

I was specifically referring to Kai Green. He went up to 310lbs this year… last year he competed at around 240. Under the best circumstances he might show up at 255, maybe 260… so that IS a 50lbs gain in fat.[/quote]

Let’s give credit where credit is due. If Kai shows up anywhere near the 260’s, that means a seasoned bodybuilder who was already huge gained around 20lbs of muscle or more in one year with the greatest change being his approach of gaining more in the off season…yet you don’t see that as a success?

20lbs of solid muscle?

“Bulking up” sure doesn’t seem to be showing me how impotent it is.

42

Transplanted post:

Professor X wrote:

[quote]Protoculture wrote:
Thad wrote:
I have been competeing as a natural bodybuilder for 10 years and CT’s point is 100% correct for me. I have done big bulks(40lbs)and big long cuts to get ready for a show

I think p-x’s point is that all those who have had successful body transformation, as you and CT have, have benefited in the long run from these “bulks”.

Let’s face it. Compare the number of very heavily muscular men who’ve become that way by remaining under 10-12%BF year round since they began serious training. Now compare that number to those who’ve “bulked” beyond that level. If you were a betting man, which method do you think produces the most results?

It’s akin to successful bodybuilders who have become vegan or extreme HIT Jedis (ie: low volume once every 10 days) after they’ve built an impressive physique using traditional bodybuilding training/diets, but are now pretending like they could have accomplished what they have using exclusively their new found diet/training.

The underlining topic, to me at least, is that there is a difference between “what brings someone to a certain level” versus “what they can get by on to maintain that level”.[/quote]

Well said. If I am going to look for a way of being successful at anything, I am going to follow the actions of those who were successful. I am not going to ONLY listen to what they say I should do while ignoring what they actually did to reach that point. I would think most people could understand this.

If nearly every huge guy has bulked up before, why would I avoid doing so myself? Because a couple of those guys now say they wouldn’t recommend it? That’s ridiculous.

This would be the time that those of you who claim to follow the scientific method could benefit from just a little observation and a lot less worry about theory.

43

[quote]Professor X wrote:
How many ways can one take this statement?:

In short, things are much different now than they used to be. I just think that there are a lot more naturally fat people out there than there are naturally lean. Just like in the old days, it is still a matter of diet, though. [/quote]

Well - for starters, we can take the words as they are written, not in the order you read them.

Things are much different now than they used to be.

More processed food. More fast food. Less labor intensive jobs (more sedentary lifestyle). Less real food.

I just think that there are a lot more naturally fat people out there than there are naturally lean.

Because of our historic, or evolutionary predisposition for storing fat, there are more people who put on fat than there are those genetic freaks that put on tons of LBM with no real effort. That is not making an excuse for the lardos. That is just what we do as humans.

Notice I didn’t say that there are more people genetically putting on fat nowdays, as you seem to think I said. I was commenting on what one of the posters said.

Excluding the estrogen comment, you just said the same thing I said.

44

Little off topic but why was the trainer of the huge 290 lb bodybuilder just some small average guy? I mean how does he know more about diet and training then what he did that got him to the pro level?

45

[quote]rainjack wrote:
GetSwole wrote:
Rainjack is speaking of evolutionary survival principles, ya’ll are attempting to equate to it to ideals of eating clean and working hard. It’s two different things

It’s the difference between idealistic rhetoric and a physiological human survival mechanism.

I was refuting the kid that said there are just as many predisposed to putting on fat as there are genetic freaks that naturally put on muscle with little effort.

Most everyone will get fat if they don’t take measures not to.

[/quote]

Oh now just a partially hydrogenated minute here. I have a lot of respect for you and have been thinking about what you said on the previous page, but you can’t possibly mean that most people are genetic fat bodies waiting to get out and deliberate steps must be taken to avert this disaster before it’s too late?

I’ll agree that the whole EXOGENOUS world is allied against healthy lean living right from birth nowadays, but that isn’t the same as saying that that there is a universal innate genetic predisposition to obesity.

I do believe that most folks fall into a range where reasoned practices bring reasoned results and those who store fat with excessive ease as well those who those who remain slightly built despite large appetites are the exceptions.

In other words, given the WORLD we now live in yes, the lifestyle and the shitty foods will get most people fatter than they need to be if they let it and some downright obese, but that’s not genetic.

EDIT: If this isn’t what you meant, as I was surprised to read this from and jumped right in with a response before reading any further then you can disregard what I said.

46

[quote]shizen wrote:
Little off topic but why was the trainer of the huge 290 lb bodybuilder just some small average guy? I mean how does he know more about diet and training then what he did that got him to the pro level? [/quote]

That guy is a bodybuilder who used to compete. Not only did he mention this in that video, but he isn’t that small at all (especially since he no longer competes) so maybe you need glasses.

47

[quote]rainjack wrote:
<<< Notice I didn’t say that there are more people genetically putting on fat nowdays, as you seem to think I said. >>>
[/quote]

OK, this is what I get for not reading further before responding to a post.

My whole argument is based on the genetic element. People are lightning quick to assume they fall into the category of folks who are genetically predisposed to storing fat very easily. I say those people are the exception and labeling yourself that way based solely on the basis that you were overweight at some point is the kiss of death right out of the gate.

This actually goes along with What I now see it appears you ARE saying. All the external influences and abominable food produces more fat people who wouldn’t have been before the dawn of the modern age.

48

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Oh now just a partially hydrogenated minute here. I have a lot of respect for you and have been thinking about what you said on the previous page, but you can’t possibly mean that most people are genetic fat bodies waiting to get out and deliberate steps must be taken to avert this disaster before it’s too late?

I’ll agree that the whole EXOGENOUS world is allied against healthy lean living right from birth nowadays, but that isn’t the same as saying that that there is a universal innate genetic predisposition to obesity.

I do believe that most folks fall into a range where reasoned practices bring reasoned results and those who store fat with excessive ease as well those who those who remain slightly built despite large appetites are the exceptions.

In other words, given the WORLD we now live in yes, the lifestyle and the shitty foods will get most people fatter than they need to be if they let it and some downright obese, but that’s not genetic.

EDIT: If this isn’t what you meant, as I was surprised to read this from and jumped right in with a response before reading any further then you can disregard what I said.
[/quote]

I must not be writing as clearly as my mind is telling me I am. First ProfX, now you?

Let me see if I can say it in a more user-friendly way.

sloh wrote:
But I assumed that people were aware that the number of people who truly are genetically predisposed to get fat easily is as common as those who put on muscle just by looking at weights…which is quite rare.

My remarks were in reply to the above. My point being that we are all genetically designed to put on fat. That fact is indisputable, except for those few genetic freaks that will grow muscle without putting on fat.

Being that we are all designed to store fat, there are naturally more people that store fat than there are that don’t.

Now couple our genetic predisposition for storing extra energy as fat with the supersize me society and the sedentary lifestyles that have replaced long, hard workdays and you have the current lard epidemic.

This is not an excuse for fat people being and getting fatter. That is a function of dietary choices and activity level. Nor do I think that there are more naturally fat people today than there was 200-300 years ago.

I hope this comes across more clearly this time around.

49

[quote]Professor X wrote:
shizen wrote:
Little off topic but why was the trainer of the huge 290 lb bodybuilder just some small average guy? I mean how does he know more about diet and training then what he did that got him to the pro level?

That guy is a bodybuilder who used to compete. Not only did he mention this in that video, but he isn’t that small at all (especially since he no longer competes) so maybe you need glasses.
[/quote]

ahh missed that in video he looked smaller especially next to huge guy.

50

[quote]rainjack wrote:
<<< I hope this comes across more clearly this time around. >>>[/quote]

You were probably typing this as I was typing the above, but yes it does.

In my opinion the take home point is that most people are normal. By that I mean that they fall into a range of genetic characteristics that most of the rest of the human race also falls into. There IS a range and within that range everybody IS also an individual, but some version of “the rules” does apply to them. Outside of that range are the exceptions.

People who truly have a legitimate predisposition to storing fat regardless of what they do.

People who remain lean no matter what they eat or how little they move.

People who build new muscle with relative ease and or little attention to diet.

People who don’t build much new muscle regardless of how they hard they work and or how much sound eating they do.

The trouble as I see it is with applying special methods genuinely needed by the exceptions to the normal people who are in the vast majority.

51

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
rainjack wrote:
<<< I hope this comes across more clearly this time around. >>>

You were probably typing this as I was typing the above, but yes it does.

In my opinion the take home point is that most people are normal. By that I mean that they fall into a range of genetic characteristics that most of the rest of the human also falls into. There IS a range and within that range everybody IS also an individual, but some version of “the rules” does apply to them. Outside of that range are the exceptions.

People who truly have a legitimate predisposition to storing fat regardless of what they do.

People who remain lean no matter what they eat or how little they move.

People who build new muscle with relative ease and or little attention to diet.

People who don’t build much new muscle regardless of how they hard they work and or how much sound eating they do.

The trouble as I see it is with applying special methods genuinely needed by the exceptions to the normal people who are in the vast majority.[/quote]

And to touch on what ProfessorX said - until you have put some time in, there is really know way of knowing what is going to work for you.

52

@ Professor X:

I debated on whether I should do exactly what you did in transplanting all those posts, but I ran out of time before I had to leave for a job and you had already done it by the time I got back. I only did this because it was requested to start a new thread. You guys had a good discussion going there.

53

[quote]rainjack wrote:
<<< And to touch on what ProfessorX said - until you have put some time in, there is really know way of knowing what is going to work for you.

[/quote]

No doubt about that either.

54

I have to look at things as “the majority of bodybuilders that are the size I want to be did X Y and Z” and therefore I’ve got to figure out a way to accomplish those things. For the vast majorty they ate their way up to a very heavy bodyweight training with extremely back breaking weights. Yes most take anabolics and I’m understand their role and what they assist in, but everyone has access to the same stuff right?

Something about guys like Ronnie, Dorian, Pierre Fux, Kovacs, Ruhl, Nasser(insert giant here) made them dominate their peers when it came to the size game. I don’t think anyone here can argue that guys like Shawn Ray Lee Labrada or Levrone(who DID bulk up big time coming up the ranks) took less drugs or had significantly worse genetics than those mass monsters. Ray was a pro at nineteen freakin years old, everyone is calling Heath a young phenom and he’s 28(off the top of my head).

If we took AAS out of the picture and had all those pros stick roughly to their same plan they took(adjust food slightly downwards maybe some more cardio) would there be a mish mash of who was the biggest or would the mass monsters still likely be the mass monsters and the smaller “aesthetic” guys still be the smaller ones? I highly doubt there would be any difference unless there was a “hyper responder” to AAS.

If you take two twins who are both(natural for the sake of argument) light heavies in bodybuilding and one had to guest pose 52 times a year ala Cutler in good shape and the other could stay holed away in whatever shape he wanted until contest time ala Yates. Who do you guys think has the better potential to gain size over the next two years?

In my opinion two years from now we’d have one light heavy and one guy trying to decide if he wants to try to squeeze down to heavies or be a superheavy.

55

[quote]Scott M wrote:
I have to look at things as “the majority of bodybuilders that are the size I want to be did X Y and Z” and therefore I’ve got to figure out a way to accomplish those things. For the vast majorty they ate their way up to a very heavy bodyweight training with extremely back breaking weights. Yes most take anabolics and I’m understand their role and what they assist in, but everyone has access to the same stuff right?

Something about guys like Ronnie, Dorian, Pierre Fux, Kovacs, Ruhl, Nasser(insert giant here) made them dominate their peers when it came to the size game. I don’t think anyone here can argue that guys like Shawn Ray Lee Labrada or Levrone(who DID bulk up big time coming up the ranks) took less drugs or had significantly worse genetics than those mass monsters. Ray was a pro at nineteen freakin years old, everyone is calling Heath a young phenom and he’s 28(off the top of my head).

If we took AAS out of the picture and had all those pros stick roughly to their same plan they took(adjust food slightly downwards maybe some more cardio) would there be a mish mash of who was the biggest or would the mass monsters still likely be the mass monsters and the smaller “aesthetic” guys still be the smaller ones? I highly doubt there would be any difference unless there was a “hyper responder” to AAS.

If you take two twins who are both(natural for the sake of argument) light heavies in bodybuilding and one had to guest pose 52 times a year ala Cutler in good shape and the other could stay holed away in whatever shape he wanted until contest time ala Yates. Who do you guys think has the better potential to gain size over the next two years?

In my opinion two years from now we’d have one light heavy and one guy trying to decide if he wants to try to squeeze down to heavies or be a superheavy. [/quote]

I also have longed believe that you are essentially correct in this view. There are some factors that could influence the outcome of some of these proposed cases to some degree, but on the whole, yes, if steroids had never been invented the biggest guys would still be the biggest guys on a natural scale. Roughly the same methods that got them there would also hold true, like you said, with some adjustment downward. Or maybe better viewed as without the adjustment upward that began with AAS use in bodybuilding.

56

There’s a lot of confusion at ‘bodybuilding’s think tank’.

There’s so many variables, this kind of thing amazes me that you want to generalise it.

I think 28 is about right to be doing well and pleased with your progress. It genuinely takes years to find out what works really well for you, and when you do, you should push hard for fucking ages.

I also don’t get how people who are touting ‘the vacuum pose’ as a nice-looking pose are so appalled at youths who get anorexic/etc. Irony?

Maybe there was some information that was around for you kids of the 70s. 1 thing i know is that a lot of these guys who grow up skinny and effete, at least where i’m from, didn’t have a man around to show them the right way, cos they just had their mum, who didn’t know shit about ‘bulking’, and they learned from her. Perhaps (in the most respectful way possible, to my superiors in this thing) you should give some positive advice, as at the moment it seems like many are just talking cryptically like ‘you’d be stupid to think this ‘X routine’ would work’ with no alternative supplied. That’s bewildering

57

[quote]dannyrat wrote:
There’s a lot of confusion at ‘bodybuilding’s think tank’.

There’s so many variables, this kind of thing amazes me that you want to generalise it.

I think 28 is about right to be doing well and pleased with your progress. It genuinely takes years to find out what works really well for you, and when you do, you should push hard for fucking ages.

I also don’t get how people who are touting ‘the vacuum pose’ as a nice-looking pose are so appalled at youths who get anorexic/etc. Irony?

Maybe there was some information that was around for you kids of the 70s. 1 thing i know is that a lot of these guys who grow up skinny and effete, at least where i’m from, didn’t have a man around to show them the right way, cos they just had their mum, who didn’t know shit about ‘bulking’, and they learned from her. Perhaps (in the most respectful way possible, to my superiors in this thing) you should give some positive advice, as at the moment it seems like many are just talking cryptically like ‘you’d be stupid to think this ‘X routine’ would work’ with no alternative supplied. That’s bewildering[/quote]

What are you talking about? No one has even discussed the vacuum pose in this thread and in the other it came up years ago. You think a vacuum pose equates to “anorexic”? The vacuum pose showed that these athletes could reduce the size of their waists to a very minimal size which is generally what bodybuilding is about on stage…large muscles and a small waist…yet you related this to “starvation”?

You actually had the thought that info was easier to find in the 70’s? How old are you? There was no internet in the 70’s. I grew up in the 80’s and there was no internet then either. get this, WE TALKED TO PEOPLE WHO GOT BIG IF WE WANTED TO GET BIG AND WE TRAINED WITH THEM.

Dear Gawd what a concept!

Do you know what this thread is about?

58

I will say one thing, though, with all the information available now in a second, there sure do seem to be a shit load MORE clueless people walking around.

Bodybuilding should have remained underground.

59

[quote]Professor X wrote:
I will say one thing, though, with all the information available now in a second, there sure do seem to be a shit load MORE clueless people walking around.

Bodybuilding should have remained underground. [/quote]

Did somebody wake up on the wrong side of the bed?

60

[quote]Professor X wrote:
dannyrat wrote:
There’s a lot of confusion at ‘bodybuilding’s think tank’.

There’s so many variables, this kind of thing amazes me that you want to generalise it.

I think 28 is about right to be doing well and pleased with your progress. It genuinely takes years to find out what works really well for you, and when you do, you should push hard for fucking ages.

I also don’t get how people who are touting ‘the vacuum pose’ as a nice-looking pose are so appalled at youths who get anorexic/etc. Irony?

Maybe there was some information that was around for you kids of the 70s. 1 thing i know is that a lot of these guys who grow up skinny and effete, at least where i’m from, didn’t have a man around to show them the right way, cos they just had their mum, who didn’t know shit about ‘bulking’, and they learned from her. Perhaps (in the most respectful way possible, to my superiors in this thing) you should give some positive advice, as at the moment it seems like many are just talking cryptically like ‘you’d be stupid to think this ‘X routine’ would work’ with no alternative supplied. That’s bewildering

What are you talking about? No one has even discussed the vacuum pose in this thread and in the other it came up years ago. You think a vacuum pose equates to “anorexic”? The vacuum pose showed that these athletes could reduce the size of their waists to a very minimal size which is generally what bodybuilding is about on stage…large muscles and a small waist…yet you related this to “starvation”?

You actually had the thought that info was easier to find in the 70’s? How old are you? There was no internet in the 70’s. I grew up in the 80’s and there was no internet then either. get this, WE TALKED TO PEOPLE WHO GOT BIG IF WE WANTED TO GET BIG AND WE TRAINED WITH THEM.

Dear Gawd what a concept!

Do you know what this thread is about?
[/quote]

Maybe.

You (professor x) becried the youth’s ignorance of the ‘vacuum pose’ in the thread alluded to by tribulus, and linked by rainjack. If you re-read what you said, you were criticisng those who disliked/disrespected this ‘small waist’.

That’s the irony i mean- you like training ‘small waist’. You don’t like less food = small waist. Shit, guys just want to follow a clear plan, get buff and get pussy. Not everyone who has a great will and determination to get to be 220lbs and lean gets there easily, and often, without positive guidance, the right direction can seem like you’re doing the wrong this, without experience. No-one likes heading further and further in the wrong direction, like ‘just fucking eat’, or ‘moderate bulks’ each may be.

I was being sarcy about the 70s. I was born in the 80s. I know about the internet. One thing about the internet is, that it is full of diverse, often dubious sources of information. Like a library, mostly full of shit. What i really look for from people on here that i respect are conversions of their relevant experience, into assistance for the less-experienced.

For example, if a previously 110lbs kid gives advice on bulking all-out, it might not be relevant to me, as much as the advice from a perspective similar to my own.

Is this thread about ‘you can/can’t get muscular gains without getting a little bit chubby/staying lean’? If it is, it seems like some people who are saying lots, aren’t saying anything formative (that is, to direct others towards a productive course.

I’m only 14 1/2 stone, not 260lbs or whatever, but at least, any time someone asks a question i think i know the answer to, i frame my answer to it in a positive way, like this ‘This worked for me, mate, in this circumstance’ etc. Otherwise what is the fucking point? Showing off that I might know something, that you might not?