RT_Nomad, How Do You Train?

Should any of you want a more specific answer to a question, as I take you through the journey is search of the perfect routine, please feel free to ask.

Please keep in mind that exercise information was pretty much limited to magazines and word of mouth. In many ways we were pioneers, but didn’t realize we were.

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It’s a pleasure reading your stories. Thank you for sharing.

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^Agreed.

RT! Thanks for this! Very inspiring to read your stories!

I am curious whether you have experienced injuries from your years of training hard - or any long-term side effects from the use of AS?

Just a little progress report on my quest to be an adequate bodybuilder competitor. As I recall it was around 1974 I went to a contest, before they started height or weight classes, held in Ft Walton beach. There were about 25 competitors. One of them was Robby Robinson. I had an AAU physique rule book. It required a few front and back poses and at least one twisting pose during your posing routine.

Backstage Robby sat on a table next to the stage, just resting. The rest of us were back stage pumping up, trying to get our muscles to swell. When we were called out to do the quarter turns, Robby eased off of his table and walked on stage and did the quarter turns. He returned to his table. Then the first group was called out to do comparisons, while I stayed backstage and watched. Robby eased back off his chair. They did a few poses and Robby came back to his table and sat down.

Eventually I was called out with the last group. Then it was time for individual posing routines. When they called Robby’s number he eased back off his table and strolled to center stage and did a double-bicep, front lat spread, side chest, back lat spread, back double bicep, other side tricep, and face forward and did a most muscular, bowed and walked back to his table. He did not do a twisting pose, but I found out that the rules are just guidelines, at least, in this particular case.

The results: Robby took 1st Place and all body part trophies. The only trophy he didn’t get was Best Poser.
How did I do? I can’t exactly remember but it was in the 20’s, I recall beating a very small number, like more than 2 but not more than 5. “Back to the drawing board.”

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I’ll get to all this, but by 1973 injuries played no role. I was relatively injury free.

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It was 1974, and a transition in training philosophy is on the horizon…

A guy from Columbus, Ohio moved to Jacksonville and joined our gym. He had a few years of lifting under his belt. Pretty much right away he was doing our perverted version of the Arthur Jones training philosophy. His name is Jim. He showed desire in bodybuilding. After a few months he mentioned that he had competed in powerlifting, and that he thought we should give it a try.

We started doing squats without pre-exhaustion, and thus the weights got heavier. We continued doing our “King of Exercises”, the Bench Press, and we added an exercise that no one did, the deadlift. Jim explained the powerlifting rules rules.

I should say that only our small group did any squats. No one deadlifted until that day and of those that were all in our small group.

We totally abandoned all pre-exhaustion training. Some only did the power lifts with a few assistance exercises, but not me. I was a bodybuilder at heart, I just made the 3 powerlifts the core of my routine, and added back in most of my body shaping exercises. But my ego was presented a paradox. Keep up with your peers, or make excuses. I decided to keep up with my peers.

We were doing 3 to 5 sets of heavy weight of about 5 reps. We rarely did 1 rep max on any exercise. We started a powerlifting team and gave it a name, the Jacksonville Ironmen (named because we began to consider Peary Rader’s magazine was superior to Weider’s magazine for training philosophy.) I was in the 220lb class, as my weight had increased to just under 220lbs. I was powerlifting to build muscle, not to win powerlifting trophies by losing weight to get in a lighter weight class. Most of our meets were in Tampa, and other Florida cities. We won most of the team trophies, but it wasn’t due to my abilities, I rarely placed, but did get a first place in a meet a Charleston, SC, where I needed to win because our guaranteed first place 242lb lifter bombed on the bench press.

So from 1974 thru 1977, I was doing both powerlifting and bodybuilding contests. I worked out a 3 day split, where I did Chest on Mondays and Thursdays, Legs on Tuesdays and Fridays, and Back and Shoulders on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Only on Tuesdays did I do sets of 5 rep squats (my form was still horrible. The best squat in a meet was 490lbs
Mondays and Thursdays were sets of 5 reps on the bench press. (The best meet lift during theses years was 380lbs)
I only deadlifted on Saturdays doing 2 sets of 4 reps with 550lbs (The best meet lift was 650lbs)

As I had said before I added exercises those days to pump my muscles after the power lifts were done.

Next: Then started the injuries…

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Since there has been a pause in the narrative, I’ll ask a question. It looks like you started training in 1968, and by 1971 had started using anabolics, which seems like a pretty quick progression. I assume that you were shown the ropes by the other bodybuilders that you knew. Can I take that as an indication that PED’s were in pretty widespread use by 71, not just for top competitors, but by almost everyone with a serious interest in the sport?

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Damn. That’s a good and interesting question.

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Here’s a little history of AAS’s from 1968 through 1978, or so, as I knew.

A close college friend, whose father (who was a doctor) died, was taken under the wing of a fellow doctor close to his father. That doctor gave my friend Winstrol. My friend ran the 880 yd run in high school and was on the freshman college track team. My friend told me this in 1968. I have no idea how much, or for how long. I was just aware there were steroids that improve athletic performance.

When I was back home in January 1971, remembering about steroids, I went to my family doctor, who gave me a prescription for Dianabol, 10mg/day for 30 days. At this time I knew of no one who took “steroids” (which is the name they were referred to into the 1990’s.)

I knew of no protocol for using steroids. I was pretty much the pioneer, or guinea pig. In Jacksonville I knew of no one else taking steroids. My parents gave me their PDR, where I read all that was in the PDR for Dianabol, Winstrol, and Anavar. By 1972 I was sharing the secret to my gains with my weight training friends. I told them that all you had to do was find a doctor who would write you a prescription. Most doctors wouldn’t write for steroids, but if you looked long enough you could find one who did. Whoever found a doctor would share his name with the rest of use.

Eventually word spread to the high schools and kids starting abusing steroids, and before long (I don’t recall the year) doctors took great risk writing prescriptions for steroids, especially healthy young men. So the doctor source dried up. We found another source, but that’s another story for another time and it is pretty funny, and illegal.

As to widespread steroid use in 1971, it was anything but widespread. Hardly anyone was taking steroids. I worked out at the gym with the biggest, strongest men and I only knew about 7 or 8 that took steroids, out of a city the population of about half million.

Top competitors in 1971? That would include no one I knew. So in a city the population of half a million there were zero top competitors.

Everyone with a serious interest in the sport take steroids? That is close to 100%. Yes, the 7 or 8 weight trainers I knew. But there was always the guy, or two, who refused to put “that strange stuff in their body.”

If you’re looking for the turning point of interest in bodybuilding and steroid use, I’d have to say 1978, after the 1977 “Pumping Iron.” And then the interest in steroids increased. Until then steroids was an esoteric drug abuse, done by very few.

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The pause was a system rule. I had made 3 consecutive posts and the system required a post by someone other than myself.

Considering the system interruption, I seemed to be writing more of my bodybuilding autobiography, than the thread title, “How Do You Train”.

Would you (and others) prefer I stick to “how” more so than “why did my training change”? And omit all the details that occurred to lead up to my training decisions?

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Speaking for myself, I like it all.

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No, I like all the detail. I have found for myself that the heavier training grew more muscle on me than the typical BBing stuff too. I need to polish some body parts (arms especially), but I don’t think I’d have the same overall size if I had stuck with the BBing stuff from magazines. Kinda the same thing you found out.

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I like the detail too!
I’ll start posting to break yours up so you can keep going. I was actually trying not to divide up the story.

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That’s just a system measure to prevent spamming. Definitely not an issue here, so it shouldn’t pop up as a problem anymore.

Please do continue posting your info/history/autobiography/whatever you’re up for sharing in whatever detail you’re up for.

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Thanks @Chris_Colucci!

Before I get into injuries, that changed my style of training, let me catch you up on my quest to win something in a bodybuilding competition. I had been to around 6 competitions and failed to place in any of them. A whole bunch of effort and yet no hardware.

I had contacts in North Carolina and was informed that the 1974 Mr Winston-Salem Open was being held. I set my sights on the show. When I got there I noticed the competition was easier than I had experienced. I placed 4th and got my first trophy. FINALLY!

But the well was dry all of 1975, but in 1976 we had the first city bodybuilding contest, which I won. My first victory.

I had been entering the Mr Florida since 1975 and had never placed. In 1977, the Mr Florida was held in Orlando, where for the first time there were height classes. I was in the tall class of 4 competitors. There were 3 trophies per class, and I managed to beat one person in my class and got another piece of hardware: 3rd Place.

Then things started falling in place. In 1977 Doc Neely had a contest in Atlanta, GA that had a Junior division, I believe it was called the Mr Atlantic Coast (Kent Kuehn won the Open division). I won 1st in the Junior division and took all body part trophies, Most Muscular, Most Symmetrical, Best Poser, Chest, Back, and Abs, but lost Arms and Legs. Two weeks later in Savannah, GA they had the Mr Adonis which I won along with MM.

I say the above to let you know that I lost way more times than I got any reward up to 1977. I refused give up. You are not defeated until you quit.

This is the time to mention what one of the State Judges said to me after a contest in 1976 that I failed to place. He had judged me many times and owned a gym. He said something like, “You have a very nice looking symmetrical physique, but if want to get noticed you need some freaky body part that gets the judges eye.”

1978 started another change of strategy…

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Reminds me of the quote from Mike Katz from Pumping Iron. Something about him being a dog that keeps getting kicked but he keeps coming back.

By 1978, my friend from Ohio opened a hardcore weight room (gym). He had departed from the idea that either Weider or Arthur Jones had the answer for the beginner or intermediate weight trainer. He went full on Peary Rader and the Ironman training routines and even bought all his weight room equipment from the ads in Ironman. The gym was no longer in a pricey part of town. It was centrally located in the city just a little east of the St John’s River.

With the new gym the powerlifting team went there too. So, the big, strong guys were doing the big compound movements. Here occurred a turning point in my training. I was moving to another apartment complex and severely injured my back picking up a heavy box of books to the point that I could no longer squat or deadlift. I was no longer on the powerlifting team. As I look back, I believe I had a severe SI joint inflammation, that might have healed faster if I knew then what I know now. But from age 29 thru 40 I did no heavy squats or deadlifts, but after a couple years I could do “hanging cleans.” I did do relatively light front squats from time to time, but my long legs and lack of a skilled eye to see what I was doing wrong made their contribution to my desire to bring up my lagging thighs of no effect.

The gym had a heavy duty inverted leg press machine that I helped to install with bolts that went completely through the wall, through the bricks and into a 2 by 4 to sandwich the wall between the leg press machine and the brick wall. With nothing compound for thing development but the leg press and hack squat (lousy machine), I went to work.

Every Saturday the powerlifting team met for a big squat party. I liked to party, so I played along side on the leg press. I felt very powerful doing the leg press and began to make progress. The leg press did not affect my back pain, so as I got stronger the weight went up. I always did 10 reps. Never more and never less. As I increased the weight relatively slow, I had done a large volume of work before I got to my heaviest weight.

Things were going great. My pressing was increasing and my bicep strength was going up. And yes we all did heavy barbell curls back then. If you couldn’t curl 135lbs, you weren’t in the party. The most I could do without looking more like a curl grip clean was 155lbs for 8 reps. My go-to bicep exercise was the Scott curl bench. And I liked doing them with dumbbells together without allowing them to touch. I still hadn’t figured out how to do a bent over row with more than about 185lbs. But we had a long pull (rowing) machine and I loaded up the weight on that.

On the upper body compound movements I was typically doing 5 to 6 sets of 8 reps, either pyramiding up and down or just pyramiding up.

What else was new to 1978 is that is the year I started using testosterone. I used 200mg per week, usually cypionate instead of enanthate, because I seemed to get gyno easier with enanthate.

Now when contests came around my delts stood out. My thighs had come up, even though I couldn’t squat (as if I could squat before I hurt my back. I found out when I turned 40 that I had had no idea how to squat.)

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Another significant difference in training in the '70’s and most of the '80’s is that I didn’t know anyone who lifted weights to put on muscle that did any cardio at all. It was believed that it caused loss of arm size. I’m not saying we were right, it was common “knowledge” of that era. Want to reduce percent body fat? DIET!

Well… 1978 was a significant year in the history of Jacksonville. 1978 was the first running of the Jacksonville 15K River Run. It was on a Saturday and the course ran about a city block from the front door of our gym. We couldn’t miss the opportunity to see these “sticks” come running past. We got done early with our Leg Party and strolled over to see the spectacle. We were definitely a bunch of muscle bound freaks in their eyes. But we sure got a good laugh. Some of us actually knew some of the runners. And heckle we did. None of those guys, obviously, ever touched a weight. (BTW, some nice looking girls ran by too.)

I don’t say this to offend anyone. It’s just the value that a bunch of iron heads gave running in the '70’s and '80’s.

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