Man, does Dante just get right to the heart of the matter or what?!
PAYING YOUR DUES
[i]"This post is for everyone in this forum–its very important to read over–VERY IMPORTANT. Want to know the average trainee that comes to me? He is 35-45 years old and after 10-15 years of lifting weighs 175 to 210lbs. He looks at me as the guy that somehow can pull a bunny out of a hat and make him that 250lb ripped bodybuilder walking the streets… where he couldnt even get close to that level by himself. He is scrambling around because he doesnt want to get to 50 years old never feeling what it was like to walk thru a crowd and people gawk, stare, and point because he is a damn good bodybuilder.
Well what the hell have you been doing all these years?!?!?! You should of put in your f*^&ing dues like the rest of us. These same guys think Im a miracle worker that can somehow add 80lbs of muscle mass on their frame while losing 30lbs of fat while keeping incredibly lean thruout the journey to get there. Well guess what? YOU FUCKED UP.
Want to know the fastest way to walk around at 250 ripped–THE ABSOLUTELY G’DAMN FASTEST WAY TO GET THERE? TAKE 2 YEARS AND EAT HUGE AMOUNTS OF FOOD, AND TRAIN WITH BRUTALLY HEAVY WEIGHTS, AND BECOME A BIG FAT OFFENSIVE LINEMAN LOOKING GUY AT 330LBS…AND NO IT WONT BE PRETTY…AT ALL. MOST OF ALL DONT DO ANYTHING THAT COULD POSSIBLY EVEN IMPEDE THE SLIGHTEST IN MUSCLE MASS GAIN.
Just eat copious amounts of food (up to 500-600 grams of protein) and bring your bodyweight up the charts which will allow you leverage and strength gains to allow you use the incredible weights you have to use in the gym to accomplish this. Then after being at that level for density reasons for awhile, you can slowly take it down and I mean slowly and most likely have the most muscle mass gain your genetics allowed in that time frame.
That is the probably the fastest way in the shortest time to get there. But definitely not the most desirable but truth is truth. Am i recommending that approach–HELL NO, but if we are talking about getting this done as fast as humanly possible then I have to be blunt. Noone wants to look like a fat slob even if it means the end result will be much closer to their ideal.
And these guys 35-45 years old want me to keep them pretty boy lean and wave the magic wand and make them into Milos Sarcev after they pretty much just wasted 10-15 years of training.
I dont like using myself for an example but I will here. I started training at about 20 at 137lbs and predominantly spent the next 15 years eating tremendous amounts of food, training with very heavy weights but keeping active so I am at a leaness I personally am satisfied with. I topped out at about 303lbs and but currently hang around 283-288 because thats what I like to be at. I put my dues in here."[/i]
We should start that sticky thread and call it “Dante’s Inferno” because his prescription burns a lot of folks.
Dante’s a selfless man in how much he keeps giving and giving to the iron game. He could have made huge amounts of money selling books, training courses, etc. with his knowledge/plan, but instead freely gives sound, tried and proven advice. Awesome.
I like reading these pieces every time they come up.
But, I feel like they are all preaching to the choir. Most of us (okay just a few) understand this and have accepted this lifestyle once we were exposed to it initially. Is there really any way to overcome the resistance met when those who don’t understand the bodybuilding lifestyle read stuff like this? I can’t picture them saying, “oh yea that all makes sense now” and have a lightbulb go off in their heads.
The whole skinny man philosophy about ‘keeping your abz’ while bulking is ridiculous, most of the time woman wont even know if you’ve got ‘sic abz’ or not, IMO it looks much more impressive to have massive with a bit of a gut than having sticks flailing from your torso.
As a 35 year-old man sometimes I feel that I wasted my 20s.
I ran more than I sould have, never pushed my bench past 225 till I was 30 or 31, the squats come hard, maybe all the running made them slow (not sure, as my legs look half-way decent, they just aren’t near as strong as a 240lb guy’s legs should be).
I ate too much bread, probably not enough protein.
Great stuff. Just over a year ago I got my shit together; not that I just started training/training hard then…but I finally realized that I’m 6’-1" and being 185-ish is retarded…
I rememebr meeting Mike Francious back in the mid 90’s and picking his brain. I was maybe a whopping 170 lbs at the time. He asked me how big I wanted to get, and I said around 200 (which would have been huge to me, having started training only a few years earlier weighing 150). He advised me that “to look like a bodybuilder at 200 lbs, you’re going to have to look a little fat weighing a minimum of 220 lbs”. That really stuck with me, and after our converstaion, went to a diner with my brother and promptly ate 3 cheeseburgers as if my life depended on it -lol.