Advice To Our Younger Selves

Today in one of the discussions about a newbie who asked for help and then turned down all the good advice just to go on doing what he wanted to do, i said that its probably an age thing. Meaning - i would not have done most of the stuff i do now, like 15 years back. I would listen to “me” giving me advice on what i now know that works, and would think “that old dude doesnt know shit and he isnt even that big to give advice at all”.

Maybe this will help someone, maybe it wont, but i wanted for everyone, who has some spare time, and is at least over 30 years of age, with at least some 10 years of experience, write a list of advice, that you now know is good, but you wouldnt have done that or listened to this advice when you were a kid/teen or a beginner.

My advice to me :

Strenght Train - bodybuilding at young age leads to nowhere unless you have those bodybuilding genetics. After 10-15 years you will wish you have done some 531 instead of curls and ab work. Being 30+ years old and not as strong as you could have been - hurts. Your muscles will grow if you will get stronger and later in life, strenght will matter in lots of what you do.

Dont complicate training - pick a proven program and go with it. Dont change exercises, dont change reps, dont change sets. Just do whats written and in 10 years you will be big and strong. It is much simpler than it looks now, but by program hopping and making changes in a program you will waste almost all of your training years with no progress.

Dont eat clean - dont push in tons of rice, you skinny fuck. Eat your protein and then add calories no matter how. Otherwise you will be miserable for years and still wont gain weight.

Stretch - find a stretching routine and do it. Doesnt matter how long - just do a full body routine at least once a week. I know you are young and flexible now and you dont even understand why do people warm up. I know you just start lifting with your top set, but listen to me - a few stretches here and there will save you lots of injury and pain.

B’n’C - dont cycle. Blast and cruise. Cruise on 200mgs of test. Dont blast anything more than 500g total, because you ARE NOT GAINING ANYTHING MORE when you increase dosages. You are wasting money. Lucky for us, since my last health checkups came back good, we did not fuck up our health but the money is gone forever and you know how hard it was to earn it in the first place. You would have saved thousands.

Supplements dont work - at least not for us… at least not as much as they cost. You can take a protein or a gainer. Take some fish oils. Go nuts on the pre-workout if you want, but dont waste thousands of euros you earned in manual labour as a teen, in some pills and powders that are advertised to give you epic gains.

Your genetics suck, deal with it - you will never be as good as you want, but you will be better than most people. Its okay. Really. You will get enough hot babes anyways, there is no need to obsess about rare genetic freaks and feel ashamed because you feel like a failure. There is lots of good that comes out of just being above average just like there is a lot of bad being the best at something.

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For fuck’s sake, log your training!

Eat more fucking protein.

Train at a powerlifting gym for a year or two (under coaching), then move to BBing.

I’m sure there’s more, but that’ll do for now

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Young me?
Money comes and goes. Education and family are forever.
Make and keep good friends. I’m paying the price now of not having kept a good network over the years.

Training? Nah, I like what Hank said above and have nothing to add. Except… forget about a 6-pack. Just get strong and you can get a 6-pack later if it still matters. Being skinny makes you weak.

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Isn’t there a similar thread already?

Edit: I cannot seem to find the other thread :thinking:

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Through my years in the gym, especially dealing with novice “bodybuilders”, the old corollary applies: “Unsolicited advice is seldom appreciated.” So, if someone is not asking for help, I don’t offer any.

Then there are those looking for confirmation for their approach to achieve their muscular goal. They really don’t want your advice. They just want you to affirm the workout they are doing, and might be open to some fine tuning, e.g., changing the angle or tempo of their dumbbell triceps kick back. I still smile when seeing a very young kid doing these isolation exercises with a satisfied determination in their eyes.

Apart from those, there might be some open to some advice.

I think back to advice I was given concerning my squat technique. I was told that a wider stance would make the squat easier for me. I believed that to grow big quads I needed to do narrow stance squats. Though I did powerlift some, I did so only to build a better foundation for future bodybuilding. A couple years later I had hurt my back moving to another apartment and was hurt to the point I could no longer squat. I replaced the squat with a plate loaded inverted leg press. The weirdest thing was that to do inverted leg presses I needed to get a wide foot position to increase the range of motion (so my thighs didn’t stop on my chest, but traveled past the sides of my chest.) And I was getting really strong on these. Sadly, I never made the connection until I was 40 years old, 21 years since I began lifting weights. I finally realized the advice was good at the age of 40.

Nonetheless, occasionally I reach out to help a newer lifter.

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What I would tell my younger myself

Don’t train like Arnold and Franco, Mentzer, Haney or Yates

Don’t overeat to get big, it leads to fat gain

Recuperation is very important

Don’t waste so much money on the magic supplement

Don’t chase the weight, form and intensity is more important

Pay attention to metabolic conditioning

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Man…well I’m gonna break it up into a few things…

Training :
You happened to learn about all the basic movements as a teenager…but you didn’t know how to apply them consistently with a basic program. Get into powerlifting or power building when you are 15/16, stick to a simple program and hammer the basics rather than program hopping and worrying about a six pack. Also…don’t do those marathons that you used to do…it causes injuries and issues later in life.

Food :
You grew up on meat and potatoes…farm food and good home cooking. Eat more than you did, but especially eat more protein. Don’t worry about weight gainers…later on you prove to yourself that drinking a ton of milk along with food does a lot more for you. Don’t worry about pre-workout either. But more importantly than any of that…be very careful with alcohol. It might seem fun now but later on you get some really serious problems with it, and you still have struggles with it 11 years later even though you hardly drink. In hindsight, don’t even start drinking at all.

Life :
Don’t let yourself get talked into doing work that your mom thought you should do. You fail the college course and end up doing a job that later in life you wish you could get out of but can’t seem to. Take that auto body apprenticeship, or take that welding course…or get into something like firefighting. When you are 29 you look back and wish you could have done something like any of those options and it likely would have set your wife and you up better financially. Set boundaries with your mom up early on because she was abusive to you your whole life and never really helped you in any way. Work on being the man you want to be before you get married…you end up wishing you had worked on yourself more before you meet your wife.

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