Another walk down memory lane. I found this box that I have not unpacked for about 5 moves. I have a lot of those in the basement. I should probably look in them in case there is something of value in one. Ah, who am I kidding, I’m sure there is just useless junk in all of them.
Anyway, I found this box full of old Muscle and Fitness and Flex magazines and some other interesting stuff. I remember back in the day reading my muscle mags from cover to cover at least twice the first week I got em’. I would hide under the sheets with a flash light. I had visions of being the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. I read the magazines and took note of all the rountines that the pros were doing and then I hit the gym with a fury not seen in many teenagers my age. And the results I got were nothing less then spectacular. In fact, looking back on it, I realize that I was most likely in an overtrained state most of the time. Not good for progress.
Did the routines not produce results? Sure they did, for the professional bodybuilders and the gifted few whos body’s have a remarkable ability to recover from one workout to the next. For the rest of use average Joes, the workouts in those mucscle magazines are ineffective as written at best. I was spending two and a half hours in the gym! No bull shit.
Now, I’m not trying to be a cry baby about this because you live and you learn. The good Lord did not bless me with the genes to become the next Mr. Olympia. What burns me up is the dirty little secret out there that they don’t tell you about in those magazines. It’s something that my bodybuilding heroes from the 70’s and 80’s didn’t want the general public to know. The secret of course was that all the top pros were juicing it up by using steroids and a whole host of other drugs designed to manipulate the body into doing something it was never intended to do. Can one get as big as Arnold naturally? Probably, but not by the age of 20. Natural bodybuilders and powerlifts generally don’t hit their primes until they are well into their 30’s. Slim “The Hammer Man” Farmar known around the world for his freakish grip strength stated that he became dangerous when he hit 40. As someone who is about to hit 41, I can tell you that I have gotten stronger each and every year without fail and I have no plans of reversing that trend any time soon.
Some of the strongest men who ever lived, lived around the turn of the last century. Eugen Sandow, Arthur Saxon, George Jowett and the list goes on. NONE of these men used steroids because although discovered in the 1930’s, it wasn’t until the 1950’s that the FDA approved their use. And even then they weren’t widely used by athletes for some time. Even without the use of drugs, Arthur Saxon set the bent press record of 370 pounds. A record that still stands today, almost 100 years later. Mr. Saxon died in 1921.
My suspicions about the drug use in bodybuilding was verified after reading an article that Dorian Yates wrote in the mid 90’s. In it he admitted to using steroids and said that every top pro was using them. I never heard of anybody calling him a liar so I gotta believe what he said was true. This article went on to talk about the cocktail of drugs that bodybuilders use, to include cocaine to get ready for a show. Dorian commented that his job was to get as big as possible and as lean as he could regardless of the effects on his health. In fact, he said that becoming healthy was never a factor when he decided to become a bodybuilder. His goal was to get big, really big. He certainly did that.
If that is your phylosophy, so be it but when there are young impressionable kids out there who look up to these guys and hang on every word they utter in these muscle magazines, it has the potential to become a real problem. I can say without a doubt that if I had known about steroids back in the 80’s when I had visions of greatness, I would not have hesitated to use them to get big. I wanted it that bad. I can imagine that there are kids out there today who feel the same way. You simply cannot train the way the pro’s do, but without the drugs and see the same results they do.
My words of advise to anybody who cares to listen is to stay away from that kind of thing. The drugs are a ticket to hell on Earth and they are only an excuse for not working hard to achieve your fitness goals. When you read about a routine that the top guys perform, note that there is probably a little something extra going on in the locker room that they don’t want you to know about.
What ever your strength and conditioning goals are, they are achievable without artificial stimulants. Sure, it is going to take a little longer and you will have to work a little harder, but the results in the end will be that much better and they won’t be temporary. It’s fun to look at those old mags and reminisce about the past, but you’ll never catch me performing one of those old routines ever again.
Yours in Health,
Dennis
P.S. – Be sure to check out my review of the Bowflex Series 7 Treadmill here.
