I began training at the tender
age of 11. Now, as I approach my 39th birthday I look at the amazing
physiques pictured in the current muscle magazines and advertisements
on TV (particularly one currently featuring Ernie Taylor, advertising
pizza I think!) and wish I knew then what I know now. Perhaps
I wouldn't have wasted so much time and maybe it might have been
me advertising the pizza I certainly like to eat it!.
My original story is featured as case study #20 in the book, 'Rational Strength Training: principles and Casebook. My addition to the success story page on the I.A.R.T web site summarises the comments from there and brings my story up to date (nearly one year after the original story was written).
My training career began in 1972. As stated above I was 11 years of age. I was also particularly frail for my age. The type of boy who was physically thin and pale to look at.
I was first attracted to weight training following a conversation with a friend of mine who, after also being one of the 'smaller boys', suddenly put on a lot of weight. When I asked him how he said simply 'weight training'.
My parents were very supportive of anything I wanted to do and we soon found a gym that accepted boys as members. In those days no one there had heard of Messers. Weider or Schwarzenegger and any approach to training was based entirely on hearsay.
Commonly it was usual to carry out a full-body workout 3-4 times a week using basic exercises for 3 sets of 10 reps. There was no attempt to validate why we trained this way and the concept of intensity was completely unheard of. All sets were finished when 10 reps had been achieved - no matter how easy or hard it had been to complete them.
I trained without rationalisation, direction or intensity for many years trying to emulate Arnold and copying workouts described in the magazines as his, even after I started work in 1977. During this period I was busy trying to hold down a full time job, attend college and train using a multiple set approach.
My gains were poor and even after I reached 19 (after 8 years of training) I never gained beyond 160lbs or so. This was probably due to a combination of low intensity, insufficient recovery and too much inroading on my system. Despite being small I was very competitive and tried to win a few junior bodybuilding contests.
It was at these contests that I first heard of steroids and soon related my lack of bodybuilding success with my lack of steroid use. At no time did I associate my poor physique with my training methods.
Towards the end of the 70s I began to read articles by Mike Mentzer. He clearly and rationally described some aspects of training that I had never even considered. One of these was the concept of intensity. None of it meant too much, but his writings were so informative that my interest was fired and I decided to 'drop Arnold' and adopt 'Mentzer'. Like others who, I later learned, had followed this path I had nothing to lose as my gains could not have been worse.
It didn't take too long for my gym buddies to notice I was
doing something different to them. Workouts became 3 times a week
and employed exotic methods such as pre-exhaust, forced reps and
training to failure. Within a few months I had exceeded all my
expectations.
Unfortunately, after a relatively short period, nature tried to
teach me a lesson, but I didn't hear it and my gains slowed and
then ground to a halt. I was overtrained.
By the early 80s Mentzer had all but disappeared from the bodybuilding scene and I was lost. It didn't take long to seek the irrational advice of others to help me move forward again. Their advice was to follow the mass monsters in their methods which I foolishly did. This advice led me down a path I would not want to follow again and, although I became a monster myself (in many ways) I now view it as a dark period of my life.
During this period I stuck to a version of high intensity training but increased the volume to a 3 days on, 1 off regime.
I thought I was very clever, including some of Mentzer's Heavy Duty theory and kidding myself that I had developed them to a point where they were continually effective.
By the 1986 I learned another lesson from nature. Nothing goes on forever. All my gains dried up, I was generally 'out of sorts' and far too aggressive for my own good. Determined to achieve my bodybuilding success I sought methods to progress forward and, almost by accident, came across an article by John Little which re-embraced the true principles of high intensity/heavy duty training.
Concerned about my health, I stopped following the mass monsters advice and decided that I was experienced enough to figure out how to make gains without any crutches. I rationalised that Little's article made sense and soon adopted it.
Almost immediately, I gained size and weight by re-adopting these principles. However I made the mistake of thinking that diet was not too important and a lot of the size and weight was fat. Inevitably I lost my way again and by the mid 90s I was huge, strong but also fat and overtrained. I looked like anything but a mass monster.
It took all my will power, but I managed to diet back down took a look at my training, purchased and read the work of the newly re-emerged Mentzer and finally caught a glimmer of the facts that not only did diet matter, but that even using heavy duty principles it was possible to be overtrained. Once I realised these lessons I began to regulate both my volume and frequency of training down to once every seven days and 3 exercises per workout. Then I gained.
After seven months, like Mentzer, I also re-emerged. My physique looked like a bodybuilders again (albeit not massive at approx. 198lbs and still somewhat smooth, but definitely a bodybuilder!).
Practical application of this type of training over the last 2 years has led to continual gains, achieved by careful application of intensity and regulation of volume and frequency. I now only train once every 12 days usually workouts consists of one compound exercise, but every third workout I include a limited number of additional exercises to ensure that each muscle group is receiving direct (as opposed to indirect) stimulation.
Properly applied Heavy Duty/High Intensity training has
given me a bigger and better physique. Despite my comments at
the start of this article, I now know I will never achieve a championship
physique, but I do wonder. If I had followed this type of workout
from day one, how often would I be training now and how big would
I have got?