I hope everyone here doesn’t mind me posting in this forum. I’m 34, so haven’t quite graduated into the over 35 category, but I figure this is a question/situation only you guys will understand.
I just found an old training log of mine from 2000. While I had done push ups/chins and fooled around with old cement weights in my basement for several years, I hadn’t been seriously training for very long at this point. Between May and December of that year, my bench went from 170 for 4 to 235 for 6 and my squat went from 230 for 10 to 330 for 10. I was also able to shoulder press 90 lb dumbbells. This was all at 6’ 190 lbs, so pretty skinny.
I had no idea what I was doing at this point, and was just following programs out of Arnold’s Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding. I continued to get bigger and stronger over the next couple of years, still figuing things out myself.
After 2005, I started veering off and my focused switched between running and conditioning (crossfit type workouts before I knew what crossfit was). In 2011-2012, I discovered powerlifting and that became my focus.
Now, 2014, my max bench is only 320, squat 415, deadlift 455 at a bodyweight of 220. I’m not much stronger than I was in 2000 weighing 30 lbs less, and 10 years ago, I was lifting weights for reps that I can’t even get for 1 now.
Here’s where my question comes in.
How many of you have looked back and wondered were you could have been if things had been different?
I had little idea what I was doing, training like a bodybuilder with little interest in gaining strength, except that it would build muscle, and I was stronger than I am now after learning a ton and with strength as my goal. I wonder where would I would have been if my focus never veered and if I had continued with how I had been training. It is both depressing and motivating.
Sorry for the long post, this was just really eye opening, and I hate feeling that I wasted years of potential.
Ben