Bodybuilder - Homemade in America

I'm just a guy from Jersey who likes to workout and happened to win Mr. America and stuff doin' weight lifting. I started with pushups, chins and dips like scrawny kids do, bummed some weights when I was twelve and messed around with 'em till I was outta high school. Then I joined a YMCA, learned a few tricks, moved to California and learned a few more. I trained regularly, I grew, I ate, trained hard, grew some more, trained harder, ate more protein and sorta got cut. Bingo, won a few contests.

People wanna know how I did it, what'd I do, what'd I eat, what's the secret. Fact is, I just answered all the questions in the above paragraph. I think it's computers and technology that has us make things complicated, ask a million questions and need a million answers. When does anybody have time to workout lookin' for all the answers and heaping up all the information? Scuz me. Anybody usin' this bench? I'm supersettin'.

I admire that information gathering, that quest, that inquisitiveness, that internal and eternal need to know: fascinating, challenging, fulfilling and enriching, absorbing and endless. Me? One more set and you can have the bench, thanks.

Anybody remember last week's newsletter? In answer to a question posed by Henrik the Stout One, I rambled on about the training routine I would do if I had to do it all over again. I gave what I thought was a fair-enough answer shedding a little light on our favorite subject, working out, without going into the tedious detail I promised. A thousand words had accumulated. At three o'clock in the morning as I turned off my desk lamp, I asked myself, who, after all, is really going to read this. I always apply myself. It'll be fine.

Well, not quite. Apparently, some alert and avid allies, though not necessarily proponents, suggested I fell short of my promise and responsibility. (That doesn't mean they don't like me.) It means I must try harder to make myself understood. Why do I superset? Why do I perform volume training? Because I like to. Because I like the pace, the rhythm, the flow, the perfection of form, the athletic feel, the etching repetition, the dance, the busy-ness, the involvement, the pump, the burn, the efficiency, the cardio-respiratory application, the high. I notice I'm able to add hard muscle as I eat big and smartly. I'm able to employ a more complete percentage of my muscle tissue with a locomotion of sets and reps performed with exact full range of motion, intensity and zeal. My first rep is thoughtful and deliberate, my last rep is thoughtful, deliberate and red-zone intense. The volume delivers maximum force saturation, maximum muscle involvement. I'm a slave.

Why do I mix in heavy days with deads, squats, power curls and presses throughout the month? 'Cuz I like the strain, the mighty exertion, the challenge, the force of will, the aloneness of concentration, the pause and focus and grapple of determination, the gravity and poised iron, the total body-mind execution, the play, the white-light approach to 'the single' and the trembling darkness after 'the single' is completed. I like the power moves because I like the power, the mass and the thickness they encourage. Call me dumb.

Why do I mix them in my loose fashion? First, why miss any of it if you can have it all? Second, because I like to and because it works for me. I think we stumbled onto something here. Perhaps something we can all agree on, the most enlightening truth learned throughout the months of writing and reading these letters and wildly spinning on IOL. We're all different and we all need different methods of training. What works for you may not work for me and vice-versa. Too simplistic? Works for me.

Now, some folks know the chemistry, the physics, the physiology, the hormones, the fast twitch and slow twitch, the research, the theory and the science. Still the questions are posed and the answers are parroted. Over the years I've honestly noted that there is nothing new that has surfaced in science or experience or experiment that can alter my original training philosophy and habits for the better. I'm open enough. There's nothing there. Lots of ideas, styles, hype arguments and misunderstanding. Give me the iron and let me soak. Most of what I read today provides reinforcement of the basic and simple practices I've applied from the 60's forward.

A lot of folks grow angry and disappointed when the progress is slow. It's always slow. Now is not soon enough. I remember when I was a little kid, 12 maybe, and I hung from a broomstick in my cellar while other kids were playing baseball in the park. Nobody was there saying, "Go, Dave, go. You can do it. You look great. Push. Push. One more rep. This'll make your lats scream." When the stick broke and I fell on my back, nobody picked me up. When the red vinyl and chrome kitchen chairs wobbled as I knocked out dips and accidentally built supplementary muscle as I fought to keep them from tumbling, nobody suggested it was fun or even good for you. Those were the good old days. And the muscles grew.

It's not you go your way and I'll go mine, see ya. It's not my way or the highway... your way or no way. We're on the foothills together. Any one of us can get to the mountaintop by desire, faith, trial, logic, failure and persistence. We can all get there by encouragement from one another, spirit and humility.

Dave

HOMEMADE IN AMERICA