the worst thing i really did was not really pay attention to diet and overtrain -6-7 days per week.
the worst though: the male obsession with strength caused me to injure my rotator cuff. now it’s sensitive and i’m working through a reinjury NOT caused by the gym…
oh yea, thinking “well, it’s sore, but I can do two more sets of ‘light’ weight”.
ugg
I’ve fairly new to the Iron game, but when I started I paid very little attention to my diet, undereating and only eating 3/4 meals a day. I must have plateaud for about half a year. I was rescued by T-mag while on the men’s health board, and the first article I read was the Christmas Atomic Dog by Chris Sturgart(sp?) about Bob the lazy bastard.
I’m a long ways from young, but my biggest mistake was fear of fat (after a drop of 87 lbs.) and thus not eating enough, especially not enough carbs. I’m now on 45C/35P/20F, 2200 kcal @160 lbs. Massive eating is not for me. With this diet I have gained 3 lbs of LBM in 3.5 weeks, and lost 1 inch on my waist. Cardio 30 min a day, 6-7x a week. Don’t believe in limited cardio, just keep in to 30 min and go like hell. It works. Weight training–I dropped weights finally and got the right form. Form is 80% of success in weights I think.
working out six days a week, cardio one hour every day before breakfast and eating six ‘energy-dense’ meals a day. WHATTAF*CK does ‘energy-dense’ mean anyway? Too vague, if u ask me. Well, I’m educated now. GRIN thanks t-mag!
I remember when I first started lifting…last year in my last semester of high school. Weightlifting class. Didn’t have much of a routine, got my bench from 135 1RM to 160 at the end of the semester. Only gained about 5 lbs as I was playing hockey at the time. But then in the summer with all my graduation money, I spent about a total of $400 on Biotest supplements(Ribose, AP, Surge) and a gym membership and worked out like a mofo. Gained about 15lbs, even with a shitty routine. So I guess my stupid thing I did was wasting all those supplements with a bad training routine, and diet was mediocre. I ate a lot of protein, but should have ate more. But this fall me and my friend are going to start working out the RIGHT way, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let these 4 jugs of AP and 5 of Surge go to waste.
I OVERTRAINED like a fanatic. In hindsight, like the rest of you crazy cats, I can’t believe some of the things that I did, ate and trained. One thing that really sticks out is that I stuck to the whole cybergenics workout for about 3 years, without a break! I was 20 yrs old and my personality type, when left unabated, insists on the fact that some of a good thing is not nearly as good as a TON of a good thing. I trained legs, heavy 2x a week, doing descending drop sets on the squat…I’d start with 585lbs(six plates a side) and strip the bar one plate/side at a time until I was just doing my body weight, for three cycles…then follow that with a lot of basketball…by the time I was 23 I was SHOT…ovetrained, chronic injuries…you know the drill…and then there was Dr. Robert Haas’s ‘Eat to Win’ diet…I LIVED off of carbs…in fact, I’d like to go over to the Mag he’s working at now and break his little chicken neck!..overtrained, under nourished…what a combo…whew…I have to stop now…I’m descending back into the nightmare! Thank God for T-mag.
Oh yeah, and using insulin. I’m positive it destroyed my insulin sensitivity. Raw rolled oats now make me as sleepy as white rice or white bread.
The craziest program I attempted was the “Big Beyond Belief” program from Leo Costa, Jr and the “Serious Growth” series. It all made sense to me when I was 14 years old. Six days/week, two a days working every body part every other day to complete exhaustion. I did it for four months–gained some beginner muscle, but almost screwed up my recuperative abilities for life. Wow, that was dumb.