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When I look back over the years,
I am amazed I did as well as I did in the sport of competitive Bodybuilding.
Mistakes litter the path I set upon some nineteen years ago. Mistakes are not
negative if you learn from them. I did eventually, although at times I felt
like the guy in that old movie (the title escapes me) where cavemen discover
music and one of them puts his hand in the fire, screams, but keeps on doing
it for the sake of the new sound added to the din of the others. I would
like to point out to you that the road will be littered with temptations of
promised gains and wonder supplements.
I grew up in the seaside town of Bridlington in England and at sixteen and
5 foot 3 I tipped the beam 84lbs wet through. In fact I was wet through, as my
buddy Vince and myself sheltered from the pouring rain in the town library.
Not there for the books but up to mischief. A stern look from the assistant
for making too much noise had us transformed into model citizens. As I scanned
the sport section my eyes locked in on ‘Arnold, Education of a Bodybuilder’. I
felt like I had found my calling, my buried treasure, the holy grail. Vince
was equally impressed and within weeks we had made some weights and converted
Vince’s cellar into the best gym in town, in-fact the only one in town.
Now we were Bodybuilders,
Arnold was a god; all we had to do is train like him and in a couple of
years it would be the Olympia for us.
With limited equipment we could not follow
Arnold’s routines to the letter, although we did do way more than enough. In
hindsight not having much equipment was a blessing as there was no telling
what lengths we would have gone to. We only had the basic bar and bench and a
chinning bar. Unbeknown to us we were on the right track from the beginning
with benching, squats and chins, but we abused those fine exercises with too
many sets and six to seven days per week training.
We knew nothing of steroids. In-fact it was not
until I was around 21, that I realised that the steroid issue was so rife in
our sport. Even from that young age I had health and fitness as my main
priority. At seventeen, when embarking on competition, steroids never entered
my head.
The crazy workouts did work, as they often do
when you are a beginner and you are not training with enough intensity and
weight to throw you into over-training. That first year I gained around 20lbs.
This was enough on my frame for me to win a few teen shows. I was and still am
gifted with an even body-fat distribution, a fast metabolism and a balanced
structure. This always made me look bigger on stage than I actually was.
I became aware of the drug issue, as I stated
earlier, when I started entering the Under 21 Sections, as I looked like a boy
against men. My genetics for shape did not extend to gaining muscle size and I
soon became aware that there was a huge difference between drug assisted,
genetically gifted trainers and the genetically average.
I felt like I had been brainwashed into
believing that the stars in the magazines actually gained from the supplements
and extreme programs listed. Never was there any mention of drugs. Even so I
still bought the magazines each month and threw good money after bad on the
new latest wonder supplement. I realise how stupid I was now that I look back.
I just could not see that it was a money making scam. This was in the Eighties
when bodybuilders still resembled human beings. I feel sorry for any
youngsters coming into this freak show sport now, although at least there is
far more information available now for the natural trainer than there was in
the Eighties. Hardgainer became widely available in the early nineties and
brought some order to the chaos for those sensible enough to put its advice
into practice.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of the sensible ones. I did however start heading
in the right direction, although I was still not fully aware of volume and
recovery. I did reduce my sets to around 12 per body-part, but I still
insisted that more than half of them were isolation moves. I trained four days
a week doing cable this and concentration that, in the belief that I would
peak and striate. The information was there but I chose to ignore most of it.
Thinking that the next ‘way out cable move’ or wonder protein would, as if by
magic, produce results.
Some results did come with the sets reduction,
all be it at a snails pace. Dogged determination or stupidity kept me plodding
along from one competition to the next. I always did well as my shape and
condition usually pulled me to the top of the pile, and even if I was not the
winner, I was the bridesmaid.
But I was not happy with my results. Every time
I did a show I was always around the same weight, 143 to 145lb, and although
this was not bad at my height, in 5
or so years I had not altered much at all. My goal at that time was to win the
lightweight British natural championships. I had placed second many times, but
always lacked the size to take it.
In 1994 I seemed to take on a new sensibility. I don’t know why, maybe because
I was now 29 coming on to 30 I was starting to look at things logically. I
realised the mistakes I was making and reduced my sets to six per body-part
and three days a week. Strength and size gains in that year were coaxed along
by adding small amounts of iron to the basic movements I now worked upon. I
had come to my senses at last. The information had been there in my face, but
I had thought I knew better. I could kick myself over all the wasted years.
There were no fancy secrets. All that’s needed is a sensible approach, basic
movements and a steady weight progression.
Throughout that year and most of 1995 I made
good gains and became stronger than ever. The year was marred only by dieting
for the British, when the gains stopped. The extreme condition needed to win
leaves you in an over-trained state. This holds back progress you have just
started to gain and even leads to regression. Having said this, that year I
did win the British at 147lb and shredded, much tighter and fuller than ever
before.
I was ecstatic, but looking back over some 30
or so shows I wonder how big and strong I would have been, knowing what I do
now? With hindsight, I should have competed only once every two years or so,
instead of two to three shows a year. It wasn’t until the last few years of my
competitive career, if you can call it that, that I realised that two years
between shows had greatly increased my gains. The spell in-between shows was
due to my business – I own a large gym and most of those years were spent
working 85 hours a week, building the business and writing a couple of books.
I felt that I was now on the right path for
strength, size and health. I stopped buying the muscle mags and relied on true
publications for inspiration and information. Brawn, Hardgainer, Super Squats,
Milo and Iron Master now fill my bookshelves. One book that I really connected
with was Dinosaur Training by Brooks Kubik. This book made me train harder,
made me stronger and led me to buy three power racks for my gym as well as
thick bars. Above all, it made me grow. Workouts now centred on one or two
movements per body-part, done with my partner in the early morning, in one
corner of the gym, next to my favourite power rack. The last show I had done
had been in 1997, and with the 1999 European in my sights I could see
improvements. I could see a thickness I had never had before, and only
insecurity made me put in some cable and isolation movements in the last six
weeks.
Old habits die hard, and it
would not be until later that I would gain the confidence to just stick with
basic safe movements. However, I still did the rack work along with the fluff,
and I won the show.
In the year
2000, I made my best gains to date. I discovered, through reading articles in
Hardgainer by Bob Whelan and Ken Leistner, more on workout frequency and
intensity. I embarked on an all body program, doing one main exercise per
body-part and one main set. Only the basics were used, nothing else. I still
made good use of the thick bars, but I now trained every third or fourth day
and with meticulous control of my food intake I grew to a huge and strong
172lb (10% body fat at 5 foot 3 inches).
Early in 2001, I
decided that this would be my last competitive year. I now had a beautiful
daughter with a supportive wife of over ten years and another family addition
on the way. Competition training is so selfish that I was not prepared to put
my family through it any more.
With the
self-inflicted pressure of wanting to go out on a high, I overdid the CV work
and dieting, and lost more muscle than fat. Even after all those years I still
made stupid mistakes. Luckily, I did learn from them and I managed to pull
back some muscle just prior to the show.
The show
was a natural Pro Am and I placed a happy 3rd beating out some of
Britain’s best lightweights and middleweights. I was bigger, but no way as big
as I would have been had I chilled out on the CV work and approached a
sensible balanced diet. But that is an area I would like to elaborate on in a
further issue.
For the first
time in eighteen years, I am training for strength, health and size, rather
than for a show. Muscle is coming back at a steady pace, and I have combined
the best of all worlds in that I now train every three to four days,
concentrate on movements rather than body parts and do just two to three sets
per exercise. The exercises that follow are not all performed on the same day,
but spread over the two weekly workouts. They are Bench Press, Dips, Dead
Lifts, Squats, Standing Press, Chins, Close Grip Press, Curls, Calves, Abs and
Neck. All are done as strict as possible and the goal is to add a small amount
of weight to each exercise, whenever I can. I do three CV sessions a week and
eat a clean diet (more on this another time). Every three weeks I do odd
lifting and sand bag work on a Saturday, for size strength and fitness. This
is in place of one weight workout that week.
At 36, I feel that
although I have done well in competitions, I have had to go the long way round
to discover the truth about weight training for health and strength. I feel
like I am now beginning a new journey and I hope I can share some of that with
you. I know that the majority of the readers are non-competitive, as I am now.
But those years of experience are of value to anyone, and they will be the
foundation of my workouts for years to come.
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