Disclaimer: I am only an RD and a currently recreational bodybuilder. I am NOT the world’s foremost expert in either field.
However …
I am seeing some people as of late on this board post inquiries regarding their training routines. Like the following …
Professor X, Scott, Sento, and all the other advanced guys here,
Can you critique this routine?
What do you guys do for … ?
How much will I gain if I do … ?
Get this thread back in order … I am waiting on my tippy toes for (T-mag poster of choice) to comment on my routine or what he does for … ?
What is a work set? (I find this one interesting; one not knowing what a work set is. I knew this the first day I started lifting.)
I see the same posters posting these inquiries over and over. Believe me, I knew what it was like to be a beginner at one time! And then I knew what it was like as a low level intermediate who made no gains for quite some time secondary to following shitty recommendations posted in articles!
I think most of the people with such inquiries are intelligent guys. But for some reason, when one states something like “get the thread back in order, I want (so-and-so) to answer my question on what he does for …”, I get a visual in my head of some guy waiting by his computer for a response, and only then when he gets this response, will he resume going to the gym!
I can’t fault anyone for this as I used to wait until a new follow-up article by some trainer came out since his first in the series did not give me enough information to piece together a routine with his incomplete guidelines.
I believe these guys are simply afraid to write a routine for themselves, go to a gym consistently for a month, and see if the routine that he wrote for himself worked or not. I can guarantee that by going to a gym and doing some wrong things will get someone far more progress than sitting around waiting for answers to training inquiries.
Why not go to the gym, talk to people, train, observe, and make adjustments along the way? It is far more fun to do this anyway.