[quote]giograves wrote:
[quote]ryanbCXG wrote:
[quote]Waittz wrote:
[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
[quote]Mad Martigan wrote:
I like the business analogy, because it helps illustrate Waittz’s point, too, I believe.
Let’s say you make your own beer, and it’s pretty good/popular with your friends and neighbors. You go to a consultant to ask how to turn that into a small business. I 100% guarantee you that consultant will not tell you to structure your business like Coors, Bud, etc. You actually have more in common with other small businesses in the food/beverage industry (possibly even other industries) than you do with the behemoth beer manufacturers.
Why? Because you aren’t on their level. Those companies didn’t start doing business the way they are doing it now. They grew, developed, advanced and changed. They had an IPO, hired a board of directors, a CEO, etc. to meet new demands.
Similarly, you don’t start with the end in lifting weights. Yes, I agree that the vast majority of top level guys do splits, but it doesn’t follow that you should necessarily emulate that behavior to get where they are. Is there a lot to learn from those guys? Absolutely, just as a small beer start-up could still learn a lot from Bud, but that doesn’t mean that the start-up should emulate every aspect of the successful giant.
Compare powerlifting to bodybuilding. In the relative world of sports, they are very similar. What do top level powerlifters do to train for their meets? Crazy shit like Smolov, Westside, Sheiko, Bulgarian Wave Training, and very manner of periodization you can think of. If I am a novice or even intermediate powerlifter, does it necessarily follow that I should emulate the top guys? I’m confident most in the know would say “no.” They would recommend progressive overload, or something very simple like 5/3/1, because less advanced trainees don’t need to engage in the same training as pros in order to progress.
To my mind it’s no different in bodybuilding. The advanced and professionals may have discovered that body-part splits are the best programming for them, but that doesn’t mean somebody well below their level couldn’t progress just as easily on TBT.[/quote]
Fair counter point.
Ok, I agree, one should look at how successful people got to be successful, not necessarily what they do once they are already successful to stay successful (even though there is usually quite a bit of overlap there).
So, where are all of the successful BB’ers saying that beginners or intermediates should avoid splits and do TBT instead? In mean, if your assertion is that these people got successful using TBT and then only switched to splits once they were already accomplished BB’ers, then you’d expect them to be singing the praises of TBT for beginning BB’ers. Yet, strangely enough, the vast majority of them (in fact all of them that I have read) recommend splits to beginners. Sure, sometimes they’ll recommend different types of splits (like Upper/Lower, Push/Pull, etc…), but splits nonetheless.
Even among the Authors who contribute to this site, pretty much all of the Bodybuilders or former BB’ers (JM, Dr Clay Hyght, CT, Shelby Starnes, Scott Abel, etc…) advocate splits. Coincidence, or just a not so subtle bread crumb on the path of success?[/quote]
Maybe I am wrong here but I think the disconnect is that you are looking in terms of absolute for competitive bodybuilding only in your examples. Not building muscle in general, or buidling foundation, balance between strenght/size, or anything not refering to the end product of on stage.
There are tons of authors(um…CT included, look at his background and older stuff) that do advocate it, again none using the absolute end goal of onstage bodybuilding, some of them just dont post anymore. Dan John, Waterbury, Cosgrove, King, even Dave Draper used and advocated a fullbody split in his book. Moral of the story is different strokes for different folks.
Also, aside from my one little joke where I still basically said if you want to look like a bodybuilder or compete onstage TBT is not for you, I am really confused why you think me advocating TBT as a superior way to grow muscle for newbs and a great tool to use 3 or so months of the year(look at my earlier posts) means that I am discrediting body part splits? I mean just look at my very first post here.
Sidenote, I also think you, and the masses, generally downplay the role of drugs in the success of high level bodybuilding and bodypart splits. Some of the authors I mentioned(Cosgrove is one I remember) has gone on at lenghts, on this site no less, that the majority of the trainers advocating splits, if having to train a baseline newb, would no doubt have them do TBT first. [/quote]
I agree people need a base but there many ways to skin a cat.
In terms of Waterbury, Dan ect those guys are strength/conditioning coaches more than bbing coaches. If your goal is strength and conditioning those are the guys I would take most advice from. If the goal over all lots of msucle and aesthetics I would go with Shelby, clay JM ect. Plus that first group of guys IMO do not have Imoressive looks. Better than the general population that’s for sure but that’s kinda easy these days [/quote]
Yes, but here’s the thing. those strength and conditioning coaches are generally big and strong dudes with LOTS of muscle mass. It’s certainly perceivable that if they took a BB approach to training for a year or 2, then get sub 10%, bring up some lagging BP’s they’d be jacked as fuq. Have you seen pics when Dave Tate went BBer?
In other words, build as much muscle mass as humanly possibly, then use the strength you’ve earned to sculpt it. Most young dudes on the bro-split are pretty much making scuplting a priority over mass and wonder why they never grow.
[/quote]
Sure, you could train like Tate did (throw caution to the wind in terms of diet and put on as much mass as humanly possible in the pursuit of maximal absolute strength and quite possibly get injured quite a few times along the way chasing World caliber numbers in the power lifts) for years and years and then finally decide that you want to actually be healthy and look good along with being really strong; hire some high caliber bodybuilding nutritionists to help you eat and train to reach those goals and after a few years of bringing up your weak points and working around your injuries wind up looking awesome. I don’t think anyone is arguing otherwise.
But, if, unlike Tate, your primary goal was to look like a bodybuilder right from the get go, focusing on being a world class Powerlifter seems like kind of an unnecessary detour along the way. Why wouldn’t you just spend those years training everything like a bodybuilder and “cut out the middle man” so to speak?
I’m not saying you don’t try to get stronger, I’m not saying to do only isolation lifts and avoid compound movements altogether (really curious why so many equate such things with bodybuilding in the first place) but why train in a way that isn’t directly going to lead you to your goals?