OCD in bodybuilding
I feel its number one the biggest problem in bodybuilding and the main reason so many people get nowhere in this sport…I really do. Ive never seen obsessive compulsive disorder displayed like Ive seen in the last year and a half as it has become in bodybuilding. There are people on bodybuilding message boards right now that are frozen in their tracks because they cant decide whether to use maltodextrin/dextrose postworkout or vitargo or etc etc etc etc etc…and its driving them absolutely bonkers.
I so badly want to reach through the computer screen and shake people sometimes and get in their face and say “Do you really freaking think it matters that much?!?!?! It doesnt matter!!! In the big picture of things, that one particular subject that you are so obsessing on, isnt going to amount to that much!”
The OCD has gotten so bad in this sport that people are worrying about the littlest of things constantly and chronically …and honestly I bet any money that the chronic stress of worrying about those trivial little things probably catabolizes more muscle tissue than anything that would of been gained (.05 pounds of muscle mass in the next year?) that would of been gained from it. I read through muscle message boards and see these guys whose best friends are the mirror, whose sense of being is if someone said they looked big today, whose definition of themselves is whether they feel ok about themselves as a bodybuilder at this moment, who are just nitpicking and analyzing every facet of things until it drives them freaking bonkers.
Guys puff their chest out and type to anyone who will listen to them on a message board “ok this is what ive decided to do” …and they type out their training routine…only to secondguess everything 10 days later when they see a new article in a muscle magazine.
Want the one way ticket to getting absolutely nowhere in bbing? Jump around like a chicken with your head cut off doing this and that and then that over there and then the latest thing that comes down the pike in Flex, Muscular Development or Musclemag Intl to the point you have no idea what the hell works and what doesnt…
You know this stuff really isnt that hard…it really isnt. There are a handfull of individuals in this sport that want you to think it is some intricate scientific equation and they are the professor and you are the student. Why? Because of many factors.
- it makes them money talking down to you
- it makes them feel very important ( let me ask you something, yea its not this trivial but building big muscles is simply about doing today what you havent done previously weightlifting wise (lifting heavier) and eating enough food to take you up the growth ladder )…when these “professor’s” realize that NO they are not stem cell researchers curing cancer, not doctors of nanotechnology and not astrophysicists but simply people telling other people how to lift weights to get bigger muscles, the reality of that is a wakeup call of “wow I aint really that important am I? Well at least I can talk down to all these muscleheads and feel that way”
- Go read a Scott Abel article on “why he is so great and everyone else sucks” and you will get a good laugh…he is the #1 guy Im talking about here above…go cure Lou Gehrig’s disease Scott and I’ll applaud that bloated ego you have instead of “Well I got Joey to do 275 x 8 in the squat today…a personal best for him!”…LOL
Want a good way of telling if a trainer knows his shit as it pertains to building muscle mass? Look at his trainee’s. Did he make someone into something special sizewise with the genetics that were handed to him or are they using top amateurs or pro bodybuilders who were already monstrous as their examples?
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Justin Harris when he was out here with me commented about something he saw happen to him on the message boards. He typed out this long explanation about a subject and he did it quickly. Some guy was just waiting in the wings to blast "oh you are wrong about this (tiny bit of…and i mean tiny bit of info about digestion that didnt need an explanation to be truthful…everyone should of known what justin meant)…but there the guy was trying to make a name for himself with basically an OCD mindset on the smallest minute factor.
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I have a problem with all the OCD in this sport sometimes as it pertains to individuals living and dieing by the latest science blurb…my problem is that it freezes individuals so they can no longer make an educated guess. HMMMM who came out with the insulin usage protocols? Science or Milos? Milos. Who came out with usage of GH dosing? Science or bodybuilders? bodybuilders. Christ the ACSM said in 1977 steroids didnt work for size or strength. Who developed Post Cycle Therapy? Science or bodybuilders? Bodybuilders. People who thought outside the box. Do you think you would have ever seen the “Skipload” by Skip in a lab assay?..no you wouldnt…he thought it all out to himself…an educated guess…in a sport that is about educated extremes.
Bodybuilding by and large is a quite simple endeavor but there are 2 kinds of people drawn to it mainly…
a) athletes
b) very insecure people who want to be big yesterday and constantly worry if what they are doing is the right thing. These people also accuse the people in group (a) of having secrets, using 50x the drugs they are etc etc etc etc…
If the OCD people in this sport (and in my opinion that accounts for about 80%) started looking at things as “Time in” instead of "its all about secrets…they would be so far ahead of the game. When I say “time in” i mean “if you eat in a successful way and train in a progressive way its going to take you this amount of TIME to get to where you want to be”…so time is the end all be all equation here if you are doing things you KNOW and BELIEVE IN that will make you successfull.
Do you know who some of the best bodybuilders Ive ever trained were?
Guys who were busy…so busy they didnt have all day to worry about trivial things and questioning everything in training, diet etc etc. They just were busy! So they went to work or school, ate their meals like clockwork, trained progressively at 6pm, got home and studied or spent time with their wives or girlfriends (and didnt obsess about bodybuilding) and then 6 months/ a year later they are 12-25 pounds bigger muscularly…because they didnt overthink everything and they put their TIME in.
Ok im rambling…Im getting OCD about OCD…Im stopping there.