Read & Learn!!! The most important factor in any successful routine is experience. While your personal experiences are paramount, you must supplement this with the experiences of others. Look at this board. Can you imagine how many “workouts of experience” there are amongst all the loyal t-magers? It is far more experience than any single individual could hope to attain. Every lifter has been in your situation at one point. They realize the difficulty and hard work necessary to progress to higher levels. They will help & offer advice. Listen to them. They have been doing this a lot longer than you and can offer PRACTICAL suggestions (as opposed to the foutines in flex, etc). This is not to say, “do what everybody else tells you.” Instead, listen to them & try it. Be open. Lifting takes years to learn…if somebody offers to teach you some of it in a few mintues…TAKE IT!!!
But most of all...enjoy it. If you can't have fun with it, you won't do it. It doesn't matter why you lift (get better at sports, to impress a girl, etc). Just don't see your time in the weightroom as an obligation or job. Look forward to it!
I will tell any beginner to the iron game that he or she needs to faithfully keep a Training Journal with a detailed record of what he eats, how much he sleeps and how he trains.Almost everything that you can learn in this endeavor you will learn more quickly and efficiently by keeping a detailed journal.
Benefits of a journal:
-notice where you are starting from
-decide where you are going
-research and decide how to get there
-learn about yourself, what works and what doesn’t
-pay attention to your diet
-plan your workouts
-you are more efficient because you realize when you are getting results
-and you can stop what is wasting your time
-you end up doing research to get the maximum effect desired
you must be persistent to keep a journal
you will do your workouts with more intensity
you won’t delude yourself into thinking that you are doing more than you really are
you have to review your past performance on a regular basis to plan your next goals
And there are more, but you get the idea.
Hope this helps someone out there, it was the best thing I did in bodybuilding.I was the mythical "HARDGAINER" (for 10 years) until I started keeping a journal, at age 35 (Sept 1999) I went from 139 to 179 in 15 months.
This information is wonderful and will provide a great foundation for you neophytes. Yet, one thing has gone unmentioned; the application of knowledge. All to often we read or think about what could be done instead of perfoming. Thought is the spark, application is the flame. To loosely quote from Ruyard Kipling:
If you can dream and not make dreams your master
If you can think but not make thoughts your aim...
If you can bear the truth you've spoken...
Yours is the earth and everything thats in it and you'll be a T-Man my son.<P>
Application is a simple concept to understand, but like many things that lead to success, is difficult to follow. The endless pool of information provided will be useless if simply kept inside. Unleash the knowledge absorbed and become the man you know you can.
Understand that it does’nt matter how much you learn about the science of bodybuilding it’s the committment to actually moving weight that really matters. You can be a PHD in gnome research and eat right take all the right supplements but if you don’t move the weight your not going anywhere. Be consistant, work out with a purpose, don’t go into the gym without a plan and just lift weights haphazardly, get a solid program and stick to it. And if you see a guy who works out with a purpose and does’nt dick around talk to him and get imput most guys are glad to help a novice. Because their can only be one absolute truth in the art of muscle hypertrophy according to Arthur Jones and the philosophy of Ayn Rand, oh wait I think that one has already been taken.
I think the biggest issue is not only about the actual training and eating but also about mindset. Too many people quit because they keep telling themselves it’s too hard or they wonder what other people are thinking about them when they’re in the gym. First thing, whatever other people are thinking about you is none of your business so concentrate on what you have to do. This is not only about looking good. This is about your health. This is about a new lifestyle. This is something you will do for the rest of your life so you better start believing in what you are doing or don’t waste your time and anyone else’s.
I always tell them to stop repeating negative things and think how much you love lifting. Doesn’t matter if you don’t believe it because sooner than later, it will happen. Instead of repeating, “I love coke”, just say, “Coke taste like crap”. First thing you’ll notice is you haven’t had one for weeks and it really does taste like crap. Positive sayings do work.
If you don’t change your attitude, you can’t change anything else. Once you’ve accomplished that, you’ll be able to spend the rest of your time learning new training methodologies. Observe what other people are doing, don’t be afraid to ask questions. Be inquisitive, research and be open-minded. Of course, not like Mentzer. There’s so much information on the Web it’s incredible. Don’t go crazy and train every day and every week. Plan your workouts and your meals and your time off. Enjoy life and relax.
People talk about motivation, about will power and so many other things. For me, it’s simple. If you really want it, just fucking do it.
A lot of weightlifters, even those who have been lifting for quite a long time, spend hours in the gym every week overtraining or over reaching in an attempt to get better results faster. I was one of those for many years, and it did not work very good, if at all! The best advice that I have gotten has been written in this site by various authors many times. YOU CAN ONLY IMPROVE AT THE RATE THAT YOU ARE ABLE TO RECOVER. Training hard is not out, but you have to balance the intensity and volume of work with your recovery abilities. Everybody has their own. Generally though, the more work, the more rest and food. I immediatley cut back on my training volume, not intensity, and paid close attention to my rest and food (although they were never the problem anyway). It was diffinitely the magic bullet, I have put on about 15 pound of muscle in a few months, pretty good considering I probably only gained about 5 in the past three years. I have seen this work for many of my friends also. It is hard to convince those I know and who do not have chemicaly enhanced recovery abilities to take it back a notch in the gym, they feel that they are not “pushing themselves”. It is quality, not quantity.
The best bit of advice I could give is to read a good book on weights from the prospective you are trying to achieve. Like if you are an athlete trying to increase speed, read Charles Francis.If you are trying to be a bodybuilder, read the Poliquin Principles. Then they will have an overall understanding of the best way to achieve whatever their goals are. It will allow them to achieve results without all the errors most of us have made over the years.
Michael
The deadline was supposed to be yesterday (see my earlier post) but I sat here an hour last night trying to decide and couldn’t make up my mind. Too many good answers!
So, I’ve sold the damned Lamborghini and bought 87 Corvettes! Everyone wins!
No wait, that’s been done before, huh? Give me a few hours here and I’ll decide an official winner. I might have to take the top ten answers and simply draw a name.
1: read every nutritional book you can get your hands on
2: read some anatomy books
3: read the articles on t-mag.com
4: form your own opinions based on your reading and trial and error.
5: have patience
6: dont get wrapped up in the ego of lifting more than you can handle in the gym.
7: Be open to new training and dieting ideas.
8: be sure to have a life outside of the gym
9: Get enough sleep
10: Strive for excellence in other areas besides bodybuilding
First analyze what amount of time and dedication you will really have to accomplish your goal for weight training, whether to buildmass,tone, or maintain. From there you formulate a workout routine which fits in all your body in that given period. There is too much information out there on different routines so pick something that you think will fit your schedule and try it. Remember to listen to your body messages such as soreness and fatigue to make the necessary adjustments. By fine tuning your routine you will get better results. Make sure to eat enough quality food with the addition of necessary supplements and get plenty of rest.
I always come away from one of these Pounds amazed at what a great readership T-mag has. Great answers all around!
I noticed that some of you stuck to the “bit of advice” part of the question while others listed several suggestions. So to be fair, I’m going to pick two winners, one who answered short and sweet, and another who gave a longer answer. Fair enough?
I ended up rounding it down to about 10 good short answers and around 10 good long answers. From each pile of names, I randomly drew one winner. There were just too many great answers to pick a single clear winner.
The short answer winner is Irondoc. The long answer winner is Nate Dogg. You guys can contact me at cs@t-mag.com.
Cool, this was more fun than working on a subscapularis adhesion that was causing entrapment of the brachial plexus. Seriously, 20 years ago some powerlifters told me the same thing, and it worked for me. Working the WHOLE body hard gave me 16 1/2 inch arms even with minimal biceps work. Sometimes things can be that simple. Thanks again, and thanks to the rest of the guys, I learned a lot from you , too.