When I started bodybuilding in high school with my best friend, Bill, we would devour the muscle magazines cover to cover, over and over. They were hard to find in our small town…
We’d often walk to every store that had a magazine rack, searching. It was a treasure hunt for the latest Muscle Builder/Power or Iron Man or Muscle Training Illustrated…
The info in them was like gold because we believed it was the key to awesome muscle. Unfortunately, that often led us down questionable paths—like training twice a day, six days a week, which almost killed us.
We couldn’t understand it. Arnold used a “double-split.” Our logic was simple: If we adopted The Oak’s method over the summer, we’d have Olympian physiques by the start of school, instilling fear in the guys and lust in the girls.
Nice pipe dream—and what a waste of precious time and energy.
Unfortunately, that type of flawed logic still exists today, only now the information, right or wrong, is much more accessible via social media.
I sometimes cringe as I scroll through Instagram. But the dangerous exercises and recommendations are just the tip of the iceberg…
So many of the so-called muscle gurus are secretly on anabolic steroids. That makes their training methods inapplicable—unless you’re on drugs too.
It’s really a disconnect that most people do not understand. Anabolic steroids are a game-changer. Almost any type of training will produce results, no matter how flawed…
When I began working for publisher John Balik at Iron Man magazine, he really hammered that home for me…
John trained with Arnold back in the day, and he told me that while Arnold looked good in the off-season, when he started his contest prep and drug cycle, his muscle size exploded in a matter of weeks…
Arnold’s receptors had an off-the-chart response to anabolics. Gee, that would’ve been nice to know back in high school, although we probably wouldn’t have understood and just ignored it. Can you say naive?
Incidentally, I did try steroids—once—in college. I took oral Dianabol, synthetic testosterone, for a few weeks. It was one 5-milligram pill each day for a week, then two the next week, then midway through the third week, I flushed the rest down the toilet. Can you say hypochondriac?
Despite feeling bigger, I was convinced I was growing tumors along with my muscles. I never took steroids again, vowing that I would find ways to build muscle without drugs.
That was a driving force through college, when I won my first—and only—bodybuilding contest, and the obsession continued as I began my 27-year career as Editor in Chief at Iron Man. That’s another wild story…
It’s been an eye-opening journey, and I can honestly say that right now I’ve honed my workouts to the most efficient and productive they’ve ever been, thanks to a few factors and people…
That’s despite the fact that I’m 62 with fairly awful genetics for bodybuilding and only training 35 minutes three days a week in a sparsely equipped home gym.
Even I was shocked at my results. If you haven’t seen the crazy story of how it all came together, go HERE.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
Steve Holman
Former Editor in Chief, Iron Man Magazine
www.X-Rep.com
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