When I first started lifting back in the mid-80s, I was determined to get freaky huge and so I worked out every day of the week for at least two hours a day (I acquired my training “secrets” from the muscle mags and various videos). Unfortunately, I was going to night school while also working full-time, so I had to start lifting at 2:30 a.m. and I was lucky to have gotten fours of good sleep during the night. Amazingly enough, I put on quite a bit of muscle given the obviously severe overtraining regimen I was putting myself through, which only goes to show that you should never underestimate the recovery ability of a horny twenty-something newbie.
The stupidest thing I ever did was get brainwashed by Super Slow ™/HIT. While I did get pretty strong, my body barely change at all. But the REALLY stupid part was that I kept at it for EIGHT years.
Let’s see. I started out getting fooled with SuperSlow. Then it was Cybergenics. Next, it was the Bulgarian Training System where I trained my whole body every day, twice a day, and believe it or not that actually worked when I was 17. At the same time I was doing that, I was on a bulking phase of the Anabolic Diet at 4500-5000 calories per day. Try eating 5000 calories while in ketosis and stop whining about how you can’t get your calories on Massive Eating. Lastly, for a while my leg workout was 1 long descending set of squats with 20+ strips until I couldn’t squat the bar. I think I also got taken with the Health for Life Legendary Abs and Secrets of Advanced Bodybuilders stuff for a while. At least that stuff was sane. Even though I was fooled all that time, I some how went from a very fat 135 to my present weight of 205 with 12% bodyfat.
Although I’m still pretty much a newbie (coming up on 2 years), I’ve learned lots since I started. Stupid things: 1. post work out meal was an apple and a glass of grape juice w/ creatine. 2. Trained every day on the following split: chest, arms, shoulders, backs. No legs. Cardio every day. 3. Took Ripped (off) Fuel. BUT I still made gains. Ain’t a newbie a strange phenomenon??
Yo AndyWayne…looks like we got caught up in a lot of the same BS. I also wasted time and money on Cybergenics, Big Beyond Belief, Super Slow, etc. I gotta say, though, that HFL’s programs like Legendary Abs and Secrets of Adv BBs weren’t all that bad compared to a lot of the other crapola out there.
Five years ago, I got some stuff to use at home, like a bench (quality one), bars and a bunch of weight, all free weight stuff, but no squat cage. So I built one in my high school metalwork class. I put bars coming out, like in a power rack, in case I failed and so I wouldn’t get squashed, but put them on too high! So of course, all I could have done was basically half-squats. The stupid thing was, though, is that I didn’t put a platform on the floor until last summer. I couldn’t lower the bars on the sides because they’re welded on, so I had to stand on something. I had to drop the weight I was using about 250lbs to go deep enough to work my hams & lower quads! I also didn’t take my diet seriously until the beginning of Apr. this year. I thought watching what I ate was for girls.
When I first started training, I took the advice from someone at EAS and did my weight training first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. HIT without food is hell.
I took HMB!
Boron. (Rhymes with “moron”…)