Yogi's Random Training Thoughts

I thought I was a big bad dude, until I did my first powerlifting meet. You realize real fast that you have a long way to go when there are dudes twice as muscular as you in your own weight class.

On a side note, shopping for suits is one of the most unpleasant experiences I can think of. Just pray the guy helping me has a sense of humor because I am not easy to size.

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Yeah, the whole perception thing gets me. The girls at work tell me not to lose any more weight, that I’m getting too skinny, but my brother in law, who is jacked, tells me, “Dude, yer gettin big.”

Sort of like that, sometimes I catch a glimpse of one of my arms in a mirror or a window and think “that dude is jacked.” I’m not used to seeing muscle and veins on myself and it appears foreign to me - and I’m not even close to being ripped at 6’1" and 190.2 pounds this morning.

Opposite a little for me, went from being a fat bastard my sophomore year in college at a very gooey 220 (probably 30% BF) to a emaciated 159 as a junior, my self perception is the fat bastard and it hinders my gainz.

I guess were all just all sorts of fucked up.

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Perhaps you already know this, but most places in the States have a standard drop of 6" from the chest size to the waist size because that’s, um, I guess the norm in our society of noodle-arms and fat-asses (I am no Olympia competitor, and I wear 34-inch pants and 44-inch jackets, so you can do the math). So I’m not at all surprised, if they just measured you around the waist and pulled the standard suit off the rack, but I hope they were smart enough to see that you may not fit the standard proportions and offer you a “suit separate” right?

This. Most people don’t have enough muscle to make their shoulders wider than the waist at all, so anyone with shoulders wider than their waist stands out as having “broad shoulders” to most people.

Show-off.

x2. I don’t really seek out my own reflection in the mirror, but once in a while I will catch myself in the gym mirror when I’m not really expecting it and think “I didn’t even see that big guy come in…oh, that’s just me.”

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I was fat but thanks to rugby had some leg and lower back muscles in my late teens - so in my ego I was a big dude who was fat but muscular too (probably sitting around 230@30% at my heaviest). Then in my mid 20s I lost around 35-40 lbs over about a year and felt kind of skinny (I was skinny fat) so I was probably about 176@30%. Went back up to mid 190 when I got into kettlebells and only when I started powerlifting and actually eating remotely properly (as opposed to what I thought was properly but wasn’t) did I get anywhere near muscular and lose and bodyfat.

So, I know I’m more muscular and leaner than I’ve ever been but I still tend to think I’m small when I think about it.

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I am in the same place,for strength though
Many times when my friends saw my videos lifting on youtube they told me how strong I am and how amazing that is.Although I usually responded ‘‘yeah it was ok’’ or something similar I was thinking to myself ‘‘are they fk kidding me.I squat 300 for reps (or whatever I was doing there) and even 400 pounds are not considered strong by serious lifting standards’’

But,as you also said,I am strong.The average person that has visited a gym once or twice has usually pressed up to 135 and not squatted at all,so benching for reps 220 pounds or squatting 300 pounds sounds like something to them

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Funny as hell, isn’t it, how messed up our perceptions can be, caused by the company we keep. My squat isn’t impressive at all. . . in these forums. But, to normal, non lifting folk, and most people in globo gyms, it is impressive. We forget that squatting even two plates for reps is uncommon in the general population, but is just considered a warm up in our circles.

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I reckon that these warped perceptions that we all seem to share are probably the biggest driver of our success though. If we perceived ourselves as most others do we’d probably be satisfied with minimal gains and leave it at that. My favourite thing about logging on t-nation is the fact that I am surrounded by people vastly stronger than myself and it does warp my perception - that pushes me infinitely harder than if the only other people I saw deadlifting were the students at my gym using 80kg.

So I think fucked up perceptions probably cause us a fair bit of upset, but also lead to the majority of the progress we make.

@Yogi1 was that Slaters by any chance?

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Agreed.

Now if only I had a photo of Yogi’s physique to inspire me…

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it was indeed! There’s a street in Edinburgh where the suit shops get progressively cheaper, finishing up with a Slater’s.

At least I’m not so cheap as to buy them from Primark!

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some great discussion in here guys; makes me very happy indeed.

I’ll be back with more random thoughts soon

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Yogi droppin’ bombs…

So one thing that kind of annoyed me on here the other day was in that bodybuilding thread that got ruined, where the exchange was basically:

Person A: Thibs says this.
Person B: Well Thibs also says this!
Person A: Oh yeah!? Well Thibs also says THIS!!!

Which is a fucking retarded way to try and make a point. The point in question was how best for bodybuilders to train.

Now, I’m certainly not trying to say that there’s anything wrong with anything Thibs has said. He’s an intelligent man and an accomplished trainer, but using him as gospel to be like “Thibs agrees with me, neener neener neener” is just childish.

It’s a sign of an inexperienced - and ignorant - lifter when they fail to see that anything any coach says is nothing more than food for thought. Once you’ve spent a bit of time under the bar you learn that, no matter how much you love Dan John, the full 100% of his advice isn’t going to apply to you 100% of the time. It might do most of the time, but it certainly won’t all of the time.

Obviously the more of a coach’s advice that you apply and get good results from, the more weight their word will carry for you in the future. That’s just common sense, but I often wonder when you see newbs parroting Thibs (or whoever else) whether they have actually tried the other methods. It’s all well and good saying Thibs’ (or whoever’s) methods are best for “natural” (eurgh) bodybuilders, but did you really try out a routine by Hany Rambod? DC? PHAT? Or do you just happen to really like Thibs so you do whatever he says?

I dunno, man. Just bugs me that people will defend their opinion so vehemently when it’s based entirely on words on a screen they liked the look of.

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All very well said man, spot on.

Relating to that, you posted in the more recent training thread that going to failure seems to have fallen out of favor these days. Why do you think that is? I keep seeing the word “overtraining”, I think the word overtraining is highly misunderstood, and some might avoid going to failure constantly because they think they’ll overtrain. Again like you said earlier, signs of folks who haven’t spent enough time under the bar.

Just what works for me, I will typically get very close to failure on all working sets, to the point where I can squeeze out one more rep if I really had to, but not two. Then I’ll usually go to fail on the last set of an exercise before moving on to the next one. I used to take most of my working sets to failure, and while I wasn’t “overtraining”, I just felt achy and beat up all day.

I’m gonna be in Ireland and Scotland late December/early January. Wanna meet?

That’s because they’re not even fans of CT, or any author in the first place. They’re just looking to follow any established writer’s words that fit what they want to believe in. Then they selectively quote these without regard for the context of the argument and/or the author’s true intent. If this was not the case, they would have used the @ function to seek CT’s ACTUAL OPINION or posted a topic in his forum.

It’s the same with science and studies. Look at that clown who intentionally copied and pasted one misleading part of an article and then latched on to the stats of the study done on ONE person. Notice how he disappeared when I found and posted the full article? They don’t look for this shit for knowledge. They are looking for things to validate what they already believe in.

And I really wanted the link to the other study. Fuck.

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Can the UK handle this???

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Hell yes! Haha, shit dude we are going to get drunk

EDIT: slight chance I might actually be on holiday but that’s depending on a bunch of stuff.

Sooner you can let me know when and where you going to be the better

I’m in for the ride! Oh and @Yogi1, adopt me.

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I think you’re pretty much spot on. They fear the failure because of the overtraining boogeyman. I think a lot of it is thinking in extremes as well. They think they need to take everything to failure all the time, hurt themselves and think “gee well training to failure is bad.”

Depending on the lift, I’ll sometimes do a DC-style rest-pause set where the main set and the two rest-pauses that come after will all go to failure. I rarely ever go to failure on isolation moves because I find that as I approach failure I get too much contribution from the synergists (traps taking over on laterals, shit like that).

I just lose interest the minute it becomes guru vs guru, study vs study. Nothing could possibly interest me less.

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consider it done, my child.

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