I love this thread. There’s a lot of great stuff here, some of which I’d like to follow up on. One thing that’s important to keep in mind - our decisions of what we would change are kind of influenced by the desired endpoint. If I was training to be a world-class PL or OL, almost everything from 23 onwards was worthless, haha. But in the scope of my own life, I wouldn’t totally change things, just would redirect a little bit. Anyways:
Ages 14-22:
I wouldn’t change anything about my training. I had been pretty well-coached by my father (very average amateur PL’er, but lifted in meets and knew what good lifting looked like) and my training was fairly sound - mostly good heavy compounds supplemented with appropriate assistance work and conditioning. As for the guys here who said they would play a sport & train for it - definitely, playing football and wrestling gave me a very good foundation of athleticism, understanding of hard work, and desire to keep myself in shape.
BUT, I would revamp my nutrition quite a bit. The sports kept me so active that I ate a ton, but too much of it was junk food. My parents did a pretty good job of cooking decent meals - it’s not like we ordered pizza for dinner every night - but I gorged myself at every meal, ordered the biggest size of everything when we ate out, etc. I would go back, eat more reasonable portions, make myself eat a protein and vegetable at every meal, and limit (not eliminate, kids have to live a little) the junk food, milkshakes, and desserts.
Or at least order small milkshakes instead of large ones, haha. I was an athletic-but-fat kid, and instead of being a chunker at 245ish pounds, I probably could have been a leanish 225 pounds and better at my sports as a result.
Ages 23-26:
Although what I did in this time-frame had virtually no bearing on long-term lifting success…I wouldn’t take it back, I would just do a few things differently. I spent most of this time running (including a slew of half-marathons and 1 full), biking, and took up yoga. This wasn’t going to help lifting progress at all, but it was cool and exposed me to other types of exercise and training strategies for them.
What I would change, though: I had plenty of stretches in here where I did absolutely zero strength training, or occasional bench workouts with some curls and nothing else. Instead, even if training for a marathon, I would tell myself that I should keep doing minimum of 1 deadlift workout and 1 bench workout per week, to maintain some basic level of strength. I also would have bought a kettlebell sooner and used it more regularly.
Obviously, if I were writing this with the goal of becoming a world-class powerlifter, then all of this was pretty much wasted time. But as a “guy who just wants to stay in pretty good shape” I can live with this diversion, because it exposed me to so many other fitness-things that I learned from, some of which I will carry forward. Probably the best thing to come out of this was the introduction to yoga.
Age 27-28:
Spent most of my age-28 year goofing around with some odd workouts, and eventually started doing lots of kettlebell work. I would change plenty about this…once I made the decision to start strength training again, I would have gone back to the gym much sooner (instead of doing KB-only at home) to add barbell work AND kettlebell work, instead of dicking around with some KB stuff, occasional pull-ups, and all sorts of other goofy decisions and acting like this was a recipe for sustained progress.
My first training log on here is a total mess of I’ll-do-this, no-wait-I’ll-do-this instead decisions. It’s only the last few months that I feel I have really started making solid progress.
I would, and will, keep my regular hot yoga practice as a complement to the strength work. Ideally at least once a week. Hot yoga class is magic for recovery.
Today:
I feel like I’m going in the right direction (have recently posted a plan for the next three months in my training log).
HA!! I didn’t know a single woman who lifted then, and I probably would have been embarrassed or gotten bored and quit. It would be really interesting to know what my potential was if I’d have started at 16.