Training OCD

I'm headed to university in a few weeks, and so for the eight months that I stay in residence I won't be able to train at home. For once I'll be in a public gym, lifting in the university weight room facility alongside all the other students. I took a walk around the gym on campus the other day and was quickly reminded of all the reasons I decided to start my own gym at home. You know the scene. Johnny-big-arms doing curls while checking out his massive biceps in the mirror, spotters practically deadlifting the bar off his buddy's chest while yelling "it's all you!" There were guys who were literally spending more time talking to the girl walking on the treadmill than training themselves. 

However, for every idiot Fratboy who was only in the gym to pump up his "gunz" for the bar that night, there were some hard-working strength athletes who were busting their ass in the gym, spending hours upon hours in an effort to add even a couple pounds of lean muscle tissue to their frames. Unfortunately, for the most part, they were spinning their wheels. Although they tend to come by it honestly, most highly motivated trainees are simply running in circles when it comes to achieving a high level of strength and muscularity. 

I believe that in this sport it is possible to take a high level of motivation too far. Often times you will see guys spending hours on the internet, searching the chat rooms for the next "secret" supplement or "magical exercise that will turn them into Ronnie Coleman overnight. This is the number one problem I see in the sport, and is the main reason many people get nowhere. 

There are people right now frozen in their tracks over the latest marketing campaign by their favorite supplement company, wondering whether N.O. products or Glutamine will be the answer to their muscle-building prayers. They are sitting in the kitchen unable to mix their post-workout shakes because they aren't sure if 5 grams of Creatine will do the same thing as 6 grams, whether they should use waxy maize starch or maltodextrin/dextrose for their carbs, or if whey isolate will absorb too slowly into their bloodstream and they should throw the whole batch out and order some whey hydrolysate. 

These are the same guys who spend hours on their biceps trying to hit the long head, the short head and the brachialis, do flat bench, incline bench, and decline bench followed by flat, incline and decline flyes so that they hit their chest from every angle, and think that leg extensions are going to give them the quad "sweep" that they are looking for. This is only if they decide which movements to do in the first place, because often they are so caught up looking for the perfect routine that they don't even remember to train. 

I know, because I used to be one of these guys. And you know what I realized over time? 

It doesn't fucking matter. 

Do you really think any of the top bodybuilders or strength athletes are worrying about petty shit like that? I can promise you that they are far too busy paying their dues in the squat rack, choking down their sixth meal of the day, and telling their friends that they can't go out to the bar that night because they have an early workout the next morning. Fads in the fitness industry will come and go, but the one thing that remains constant is hard work and dedication to the basics. 

What do you think is going to build more muscle on your quads? A 500 lb squat, balls to the wall taken all the way to the floor for 20 reps, or a 100 lb leg extension? Do you really think that if you work hard enough on that set of squats you should have enough energy left for the extensions anyway? 

If more people picked 6 - 8 big, basic compounds movements and got brutally, inhuman strong on each of them while consistently adding more food to their plates, there would be far more massive human beings walking around. 

The fastest way of getting absolutely nowhere in this sport is to jump around from program to program like a chicken with your head cut off, following the latest bullshit routine that rolls through Flex magazine and thinking it's your ticket to mass-ville. 

Bodybuilding is both a blessing and a curse for many people. The types of people that are generally drawn to the sport are those who are insecure about their image and are constantly worrying if they are doing the right thing. They think that there are a bunch of "secrets" that all the big guys are keeping from them, and are always on the search to find them out. For the small handful of guys that figure out the keys to progress in this sport, they are blessed with the realization that consistency and simplicity will trump the most complex routine of isometric thermogenic myofibrillar hypertonic volume training any day of the week. 

My advice to all the highly motivated athletes out there is simply to consider what the keys to progress are. If you think hard enough about it, you already know them: Consistently add weight to the bar and get stronger at big, basic movements such as deadlifts, squats, presses, chins and rows, while eating upwards of 4000 calories per day of non-junk food, and get 8 hours of sleep each night. 

This sport is simple, but for some reason it's the most motivated athletes who make it complicated. I'm going to leave you with a quote from Dante Trudell that sums up the point I've been trying to get across:

"You want to worry bout something? Worry about that damn logbook. Worry about staying uninjured in your quest. Worry about not missing any meals. Worry about somehow someway making yourself the strongest bodybuilder you can become.

A brute. A behemoth. A human forklift."

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- T