Advice To My 18-Year-Old Self

On January 1st of this year I turned 30.

As well as ushering in a malaise of cynicism and despair, crippling hangovers, an aversion to doing anything other than drinking tea in my pyjamas on a Friday night, and the weary acceptance that we will all soon die in the incendiary light of a nuclear explosion, I’ve found myself in a reflective mood.

One of the constants in my life has always been been sport and fitness, and while I have by no means set the world alight with feats of strength and athleticism, I’ve certainly learned a great deal, especially in regard to lifting weights, which has been something I’ve pursued on and off for most of the last decade.

In my late teens and early twenties I was your typical bicep-curling, six-pack striving, non-squatting, skinny novice, who had no sodding clue what he was doing.

Below are some pictures which perfectly encapsulate this point in time – a period where I was seemingly in training to become ‘Britain’s Biggest Tosser’.

These were posted to Facebook and inundated (justifiably) with responses such as “sort your life out”, “bender”, “you look like a post-op Clare Balding who has just discovered protein shakes”.

In my defence, topless photos are permissible as youthful vanity, whereas having a photo of a car as your profile pic will always make you a cunt.

Over the next 10 years, by trial and error (mostly error) I figured out what worked and what didn’t when it came to muscle and strength development.

I reckoned that some of this accumulated knowledge might be of use to someone out there, so here it is…

Eat more

If I could only dish out one piece of advice to my 18-year-old self, it would be this.

If you want to get bigger and stronger, eat as much you can.

When I first started out, I believed the pump I was getting in the gym was the sole driver of muscle growth.

A key distinction, which took me so many years to grasp, is that whereas muscles are placed under the stress by lifting weights, actual growth is facilitated by adequate diet (and rest).

And adequate diet, in the context of getting big and strong, means consistently putting yourself in a caloric surplus with good quality food.

It doesn’t mean chugging down a protein shake during the 45 minutes post-workout anabolic window and then scarcely eating or grazing on Doritos and cocktail sausages for the rest of the day (true story).

If you’re serious about making progress, you should be eating at lest four meals per day which comprise good protein sources (meat, fish, eggs) with some decent carbs (rice, potatoes) and huge mounds of fruit and vegetables.

To drive muscle growth, protein intake should be around one gram per pound of bodyweight per day and your daily caloric intake should fall between 3,500 and 6,000 calories.

Don’t worry about meticulous calorie counting with apps like MyFitnessPal, nobody’s got time for that, just fucking get it all in, eat as much you can.

Take your diet as serious as your workouts, and you’ll be on the right track.

To grease the wheels, old-school strength and bodybuilding coaches – including Mark Rippetoe – recommend, with decades of experience behind them, that ectomorphs consume a gallon (8 pints) of whole milk every day (GOMAD) while starting out, adding in pints with meals and at regular intervals during the day.

To novices this might seem like an awful lot of food, but if you want to disrupt homeostasis and force muscle growth, eating everything that isn’t nailed down is as important – actually more important – than lifting heavy weights.

If you’re anything like I was at 18, you’re probably thinking that all this food is going to destroy you hard-earned six pack.

And you’d be right.

But here’s the truth, which you probably don’t want to hear:

No-one, apart from you, gives a lubricated fuck about your low body fat and six pack abs.

In a t-shirt you look just like any other average guy who doesn’t lift.

Narcissism aside, do you really think women are going to find your skinny frame more attractive than a guy with wide shoulders and powerful legs who could hammer throw you over a two story building without breaking sweat?

Chasing aesthetics is not going to get you strong and it’s not going to get you laid.

Pick up a fucking fork.

Focus on getting strong

If you want to get big (naturally) you need to get strong.

Bigger muscles are a side-effect of getting stronger, and by focusing on strength training (with adequate diet and rest) everything else will fall into place.

I may be paraphrasing here, but I’m pretty sure it was Ghandi who once said, “If you’re not lifting heavy fucking weights, what’s the fucking point?”

For a novice, the most efficient way to get strong is with linear progression on the main compound lifts (squat, deadlift, overhead press, bench press).

At this stage in your training, your routine should NOT incorporate any of the following:

• ‘Hypertophy’ rep ranges (the typical 3 x 8-12 you see in bodybuilding routines)
• ‘Bro splits’ (‘arm day’, ‘ankle day’, ‘spleen day’)
• Time under tension
• Negative reps
• Mind-muscle connection
• Resistance machines
• Isolation exercises
• Supersets/dropsets
• HIIT/excessive cardio

If you’re just starting out and your lifting regimen draws on any of these, you’re not just wasting your time but hindering progress as well.

Yes, you’ll see no doubt see some initial gains from some of this bodybuilding guff, but this will be down to the well-documented ‘novice effect’, whereby any weightlifting work will disrupt homeostatis.

Standing on one leg while juggling and having your rectum vacuumed by a chimpanzee will give you muscle gains up to a point.

Bottom line, if your routine does not revolve around consistently adding weight to the bar on the big lifts, five years down the line you’ll be no stronger and look just the same.

“But this study… blah blah… hypertrophy… blah blah… if you’ve read the literature, it actually proves… blah blah… and this guy on YouTube said…”

For fuck sake, who do you think is going to end up with bigger muscles, someone who has steadily built their 5RM bench press to 130kg or someone who can bench 3 x 10 with 50kg using a reverse grip on a bosu ball with 20 seconds rest betweens sets?

Use some common sense, cum swamp.

Master the main compound lifts

Rather than mastering the squat, deadlift, bench and press as a novice, I, like many others, spent far too much time on unnecessary shite.

After listening to unsolicited advice from the biggest guy at Dunstable leisure centre gym (imagine a shaved Splinter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles after 10 years of nonstop bicep curls and multiple ASBOs) and reading every issue of Muscle & Fitness magazine, I became an ardent disciple of the school of muscle confusion.

“Your muscles won’t grow if you keep hitting them with the same exercises every week” was what my new coach would tell me every time I saw him (usually in Asda car park where he would walk around in a high-vis jacket – I later found out he didn’t even work there).

Despite the fact his advice typically resembled the maniacal musings of someone who hasn’t left a fruit machine for 7 hours (politicians are all shapeshifting lizards, the best way to finger a girl, how he once wired a sex doll up to the mains, etc etc), I believed him.

I was also determined to try all those useless routines in muscle magazines: “8 Week Bicep Building Bonanza”, “Power Up Your Pec To Pussy Ratio”, “The Secret Kryptonian Muscle Building Secret Superman Uses To Bend Iron Bars”, “How I Spent 10 Years In A High-Security Sex Dungeon But Still Maintained My Muscular Chest”.

There was only one way I was getting massive and that was by constantly attacking my muscles from different angles and confusing the merry shit out of them.

I would constantly rotate exercises, routines and rep ranges to stop my muscles getting used the stress I was putting them through, and I would smirk at the rugby players who would come in and spend 45 minutes squatting with heavy weights three times a week.

Idiots, if only they knew…

I must have tried 10 different variations of the bicep curl, high rep prone legs curls, one leg bosu ball squats, reverse-close-grip-paused incline bench presses, Arnold press standing on one leg.

There was not a proper squat or deadlift in site.

And I got nowhere.

Even when I did figure out where I was going wrong, the compound lifts that started to find there way into my workout were done with terrible form.

If I’d only got proper instruction on how to squat, deadlift, bench and press when I started out, and spent the following years perfecting my technique and persevering when things got tough rather than just switching up my programme again, I would have prevented years of wasted gains.

Increasing volume, intensity and frequency on the main lifts are the only effective stressors for long-term increases in strength and muscle size.

Constantly varying exercises is not an effective training stress.

Train like a beginner, not Arnold Schwarzenegger

One of the first bodybuilding books I owned was The New Encyclopaedia of Modern Bodybuilding by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I remember the excitement I felt flicking through these pages for the first time (this is it! this is like Moses coming down from Mount Sinai!) and jotting down what was to be my new, devastatingly effective training routine.

Following Arnold’s secret My Olmypia training principles was going to transform me from a skinny weakling who bore a passing resemblance to the bully from Karate Kid to an irresistible He-Man with a sex life so extreme that it would make the world’s most penetrated porn star throw up in disgust.

If only.

What I failed to appreciate at the time was that Arnold was a genetic freak who had been training for decades and used powerful anabolic steroids.

Following his high volume split routines to the letter caused me an awful lot of soreness, a great deal of fatigue and precious little in the way of strength and muscle gain.

I failed to grasp that in order to produce optimal results as a novice I needed to train like a novice, and not a seven-time Mr Olympia.

The training stress was far too high and because I was training almost every day recovery was insufficient to drive adaption.

As a beginner, the most effective way to make progress quickly is with full body workouts, three days a week, focusing on the main compound lifts.

This schedule (at least for 4-9 months) perfectly balances training stress and recovery allowing you to add weight to the bar every session and drive adaption/growth.

This approach to progression is called linear periodisaton.

As a teenager, this is the protocol Arnold followed to establish his foundation, not high-volume splits, and the one he would recommend to novice trainees at his gym and dub ‘The Golden Six‘.

Similarly, as a beginner Arnold also followed the blueprint laid down by Reg Park, his hero and mentor, who first established the 5×5 protocol now prescribed in popular routines such as Starting Strength and Stronglifts.

Learn the difference between ‘training’ and ‘exercise’

The vast majority of gym goers accomplish precious little other than working up a sweat and making themselves sore the next day.

And this is all well and good if your goal is to maintain your current physique or lose weight by burning calories.

But most people, if they’re being honest, want more than this.

As a teenager I certainly did.

I wanted to be big and strong, I wanted to fill out a t-shirt, I wanted women to look at me and immediately feel the urge to expose their nipples and fanny in my general direction.

But what I was doing in the gym usually amounted to mere ‘exercise’ – not proper training geared to muscle and strength development.

When I was chasing a big, lean, muscular physique, a typical session would be 10 minutes warm up on the cross trainer, 10 minutes foam rolling and stretching, one random compound lift (whatever equipment was free), then maybe 3 sets of 8-12 reps on 3-5 isolation exercises, capped off with a max effort mile on the treadmill and some situps.

Sure, this was a busy routine which burnt a load of calories and got me working up a sweat, but I wasn’t developing strength and size, which was what I really wanted.

I was trying to cover too many bases – get strong, get big biceps, lose bodyfat, have razor abs, improve aerobic fitness (basically Crossfit).

There was too much cardio, too much unnecessary shit, and not enough time spent under a progressively heavy barbell, which was evident in my lack of real progress on the compound lifts.

If you’re new to the gym, avoid my mistake and follow a long-term training schedule which is wholly geared towards driving improvement on the main lifts, not just a random ‘what shall I do today’ programme that amounts to a whole lot of nothing.

Don’t waste money on supplements

Although the fitness industry would have you believe otherwise, you do not need supplements to get big and strong.

There is nothing in supplements that you cannot get from an adequate diet.

If you are training properly, eating properly and resting properly there is no need to throw your cash away, especially if you’re a beginner.

People that stack their cupboards high with pills and powders often do not want to hear the simple, hard-to-swallow truth:

The only way you’re getting bigger is through lifting heavy weights, maintaining a caloric surplus and perseverance.

It’s just easier to keep telling yourself that your programme is to blame or you’re not getting enough creatine or that maybe this new study from Japan which shows how eating a boiled rhino’s vagina can enhance cellular function is the answer to your training plateau.

Fact is, there’s no supplement that works as well as doggedly getting your 5RM squat up to 150kg and eating a shit tonne of meat and veg.

The only reason to take supplements is if you honestly struggle to maintain a healthy diet or you’re just too lazy to get yourself organised.

In that case, get yourself some good quality whey protein to make sure you hit a gram of protein per pound of bodyweight every day and take a multivitamin and fish oil as some general nutrition insurance.

But, honestly, how hard is it to have sardines or mackerel a few times a week instead of resorting to pills?

And do you really need a big tub of whey every month when you can get the same amount of protein from whole milk and regular meals?

And while creatine might be one of the most well-studied supplements out there, my personal experience, in over ten years of lifting, is that it delivers very little in the way of performance benefit.

And while I’m not going to fly in the face of science (I trust the research), I believe that most lifters would be better off forgetting about supplements that may or may not enhance performance by 0.05% and instead focus on something more important.

Ultimately, a good night’s sleep and a strong cup of coffee will do more for your squat PR than religiously supplementing 5g creatine every day.

Sleep!

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” used to be the adage of someone I knew when I was in my early twenties.

Well, he is dead now.

Turns out all those 3am smack sessions aren’t very good for the heart.

The point being, I guess, is that you should look after yourself, and consistently depriving yourself of sleep is a surefire way to fuck your body up.

And it should go without saying that injecting heroin is probably going to hinder progress on your 5rm deadlift.

If you’re training for any sport, getting at least 8 hours sleep every night is one of the most powerful weapons in your arsenal.

Sleep is a powerful anabolic aid that is absolutely critical to the stress/adaptation model (along with nutrition).

It is where the most potent recovery occurs, and deserves as much attention as your nutrition and training.

Don’t treat it as an inconvenience that happens at the end of your day, take it as seriously as mapping out your training schedule.

And by 8 hours, I don’t mean getting into bed at 10:30pm, scrolling on your iPhone for an hour, bashing one out, nipping for a quick wee, finally getting some shuteye around 1am, then waking up at 7 to hit ‘snooze’ every 15 minutes.

Do everything you can to ensure you’re sleeping soundly for a full eight hours – invest in a decent mattress and pillow, get some proper blinds, read a book before dozing off (a great help, apparently).

Signing off

So, there we have it, seven pieces of advice that would have spared my 18-year-old self a lot of wasted time and effort.

I apologise to those of you who were expecting a grand reveal of some powerful Soviet muscle building secrets that the Kremlin have been keeping under lock and key since 1920.

Truth is, to see results you don’t need to sacrifice a baby unicorn or commit to ten years of study in a temple in Kathmandu.

For the most part, you just need to rely on common sense, consistency and hard work – i.e. squatting heavy for a decade.

And while a lot of this stuff may elicit a “no shit” response from some – like hearing that Hitler once upended a table and punched someone in the head after losing a game of Risk – most beginners, like my 18-year-old self, fail to see the wood for the trees.

But, to strike a final philosophical point, as most articles of this nature do, if I could go back in time, would I really change everything?

No of c… YES, YES I FUCKING WOULD.

Obviously I would.

By now I would be absolutely bloody MASSIVE.

Over to you

Experienced lifters out there – what advice would you give to your 18-year-old self?

Let me know in the comments section below, I’d love to hear from you!

The post Advice To My 18-Year-Old Self appeared first on Gymtalk.

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Advice To My 18-Year-Old Self

On January 1st of this year I turned 30.

As well as ushering in a malaise of cynicism and despair, crippling hangovers, an aversion to doing anything other than drinking tea in my pyjamas on a Friday night, and the weary acceptance that we will all soon die in the incendiary light of a nuclear explosion, I’ve found myself in a reflective mood.

One of the constants in my life has always been been sport and fitness, and while I have by no means set the world alight with feats of strength and athleticism, I’ve certainly learned a great deal, especially in regard to lifting weights, which has been something I’ve pursued on and off for most of the last decade.

In my late teens and early twenties I was your typical bicep-curling, six-pack striving, non-squatting, skinny novice, who had no sodding clue what he was doing.

Below are some pictures which perfectly encapsulate this point in time – a period where I was seemingly in training to become ‘Britain’s Biggest Tosser’.

These were posted to Facebook and inundated (justifiably) with responses such as “sort your life out”, “bender”, “you look like a post-op Clare Balding who has just discovered protein shakes”.

In my defence, topless photos are permissible as youthful vanity, whereas having a photo of a car as your profile pic will always make you a cunt.

Over the next 10 years, by trial and error (mostly error) I figured out what worked and what didn’t when it came to muscle and strength development.

I reckoned that some of this accumulated knowledge might be of use to someone out there, so here it is…

Eat more

If I could only dish out one piece of advice to my 18-year-old self, it would be this.

If you want to get bigger and stronger, eat as much you can.

When I first started out, I believed the pump I was getting in the gym was the sole driver of muscle growth.

A key distinction, which took me so many years to grasp, is that whereas muscles are placed under the stress by lifting weights, actual growth is facilitated by adequate diet (and rest).

And adequate diet, in the context of getting big and strong, means consistently putting yourself in a caloric surplus with good quality food.

It doesn’t mean chugging down a protein shake during the 45 minutes post-workout anabolic window and then scarcely eating or grazing on Doritos and cocktail sausages for the rest of the day (true story).

If you’re serious about making progress, you should be eating at lest four meals per day which comprise good protein sources (meat, fish, eggs) with some decent carbs (rice, potatoes) and huge mounds of fruit and vegetables.

To drive muscle growth, protein intake should be around one gram per pound of bodyweight per day and your daily caloric intake should fall between 3,500 and 6,000 calories.

Don’t worry about meticulous calorie counting with apps like MyFitnessPal, nobody’s got time for that, just fucking get it all in, eat as much you can.

Take your diet as serious as your workouts, and you’ll be on the right track.

To grease the wheels, old-school strength and bodybuilding coaches – including Mark Rippetoe – recommend, with decades of experience behind them, that ectomorphs consume a gallon (8 pints) of whole milk every day (GOMAD) while starting out, adding in pints with meals and at regular intervals during the day.

To novices this might seem like an awful lot of food, but if you want to disrupt homeostasis and force muscle growth, eating everything that isn’t nailed down is as important – actually more important – than lifting heavy weights.

If you’re anything like I was at 18, you’re probably thinking that all this food is going to destroy you hard-earned six pack.

And you’d be right.

But here’s the truth, which you probably don’t want to hear:

No-one, apart from you, gives a lubricated fuck about your low body fat and six pack abs.

In a t-shirt you look just like any other average guy who doesn’t lift.

Narcissism aside, do you really think women are going to find your skinny frame more attractive than a guy with wide shoulders and powerful legs who could hammer throw you over a two story building without breaking sweat?

Chasing aesthetics is not going to get you strong and it’s not going to get you laid.

Pick up a fucking fork.

Focus on getting strong

If you want to get big (naturally) you need to get strong.

Bigger muscles are a side-effect of getting stronger, and by focusing on strength training (with adequate diet and rest) everything else will fall into place.

I may be paraphrasing here, but I’m pretty sure it was Ghandi who once said, “If you’re not lifting heavy fucking weights, what’s the fucking point?”

For a novice, the most efficient way to get strong is with linear progression on the main compound lifts (squat, deadlift, overhead press, bench press).

At this stage in your training, your routine should NOT incorporate any of the following:

• ‘Hypertophy’ rep ranges (the typical 3 x 8-12 you see in bodybuilding routines)
• ‘Bro splits’ (‘arm day’, ‘ankle day’, ‘spleen day’)
• Time under tension
• Negative reps
• Mind-muscle connection
• Resistance machines
• Isolation exercises
• Supersets/dropsets
• HIIT/excessive cardio

If you’re just starting out and your lifting regimen draws on any of these, you’re not just wasting your time but hindering progress as well.

Yes, you’ll see no doubt see some initial gains from some of this bodybuilding guff, but this will be down to the well-documented ‘novice effect’, whereby any weightlifting work will disrupt homeostatis.

Standing on one leg while juggling and having your rectum vacuumed by a chimpanzee will give you muscle gains up to a point.

Bottom line, if your routine does not revolve around consistently adding weight to the bar on the big lifts, five years down the line you’ll be no stronger and look just the same.

“But this study… blah blah… hypertrophy… blah blah… if you’ve read the literature, it actually proves… blah blah… and this guy on YouTube said…”

For fuck sake, who do you think is going to end up with bigger muscles, someone who has steadily built their 5RM bench press to 130kg or someone who can bench 3 x 10 with 50kg using a reverse grip on a bosu ball with 20 seconds rest betweens sets?

Use some common sense, cum swamp.

Master the main compound lifts

Rather than mastering the squat, deadlift, bench and press as a novice, I, like many others, spent far too much time on unnecessary shite.

After listening to unsolicited advice from the biggest guy at Dunstable leisure centre gym (imagine a shaved Splinter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles after 10 years of nonstop bicep curls and multiple ASBOs) and reading every issue of Muscle & Fitness magazine, I became an ardent disciple of the school of muscle confusion.

“Your muscles won’t grow if you keep hitting them with the same exercises every week” was what my new coach would tell me every time I saw him (usually in Asda car park where he would walk around in a high-vis jacket – I later found out he didn’t even work there).

Despite the fact his advice typically resembled the maniacal musings of someone who hasn’t left a fruit machine for 7 hours (politicians are all shapeshifting lizards, the best way to finger a girl, how he once wired a sex doll up to the mains, etc etc), I believed him.

I was also determined to try all those useless routines in muscle magazines: “8 Week Bicep Building Bonanza”, “Power Up Your Pec To Pussy Ratio”, “The Secret Kryptonian Muscle Building Secret Superman Uses To Bend Iron Bars”, “How I Spent 10 Years In A High-Security Sex Dungeon But Still Maintained My Muscular Chest”.

There was only one way I was getting massive and that was by constantly attacking my muscles from different angles and confusing the merry shit out of them.

I would constantly rotate exercises, routines and rep ranges to stop my muscles getting used the stress I was putting them through, and I would smirk at the rugby players who would come in and spend 45 minutes squatting with heavy weights three times a week.

Idiots, if only they knew…

I must have tried 10 different variations of the bicep curl, high rep prone legs curls, one leg bosu ball squats, reverse-close-grip-paused incline bench presses, Arnold press standing on one leg.

There was not a proper squat or deadlift in site.

And I got nowhere.

Even when I did figure out where I was going wrong, the compound lifts that started to find there way into my workout were done with terrible form.

If I’d only got proper instruction on how to squat, deadlift, bench and press when I started out, and spent the following years perfecting my technique and persevering when things got tough rather than just switching up my programme again, I would have prevented years of wasted gains.

Increasing volume, intensity and frequency on the main lifts are the only effective stressors for long-term increases in strength and muscle size.

Constantly varying exercises is not an effective training stress.

Train like a beginner, not Arnold Schwarzenegger

One of the first bodybuilding books I owned was The New Encyclopaedia of Modern Bodybuilding by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I remember the excitement I felt flicking through these pages for the first time (this is it! this is like Moses coming down from Mount Sinai!) and jotting down what was to be my new, devastatingly effective training routine.

Following Arnold’s secret My Olmypia training principles was going to transform me from a skinny weakling who bore a passing resemblance to the bully from Karate Kid to an irresistible He-Man with a sex life so extreme that it would make the world’s most penetrated porn star throw up in disgust.

If only.

What I failed to appreciate at the time was that Arnold was a genetic freak who had been training for decades and used powerful anabolic steroids.

Following his high volume split routines to the letter caused me an awful lot of soreness, a great deal of fatigue and precious little in the way of strength and muscle gain.

I failed to grasp that in order to produce optimal results as a novice I needed to train like a novice, and not a seven-time Mr Olympia.

The training stress was far too high and because I was training almost every day recovery was insufficient to drive adaption.

As a beginner, the most effective way to make progress quickly is with full body workouts, three days a week, focusing on the main compound lifts.

This schedule (at least for 4-9 months) perfectly balances training stress and recovery allowing you to add weight to the bar every session and drive adaption/growth.

This approach to progression is called linear periodisaton.

As a teenager, this is the protocol Arnold followed to establish his foundation, not high-volume splits, and the one he would recommend to novice trainees at his gym and dub ‘The Golden Six‘.

Similarly, as a beginner Arnold also followed the blueprint laid down by Reg Park, his hero and mentor, who first established the 5×5 protocol now prescribed in popular routines such as Starting Strength and Stronglifts.

Learn the difference between ‘training’ and ‘exercise’

The vast majority of gym goers accomplish precious little other than working up a sweat and making themselves sore the next day.

And this is all well and good if your goal is to maintain your current physique or lose weight by burning calories.

But most people, if they’re being honest, want more than this.

As a teenager I certainly did.

I wanted to be big and strong, I wanted to fill out a t-shirt, I wanted women to look at me and immediately feel the urge to expose their nipples and fanny in my general direction.

But what I was doing in the gym usually amounted to mere ‘exercise’ – not proper training geared to muscle and strength development.

When I was chasing a big, lean, muscular physique, a typical session would be 10 minutes warm up on the cross trainer, 10 minutes foam rolling and stretching, one random compound lift (whatever equipment was free), then maybe 3 sets of 8-12 reps on 3-5 isolation exercises, capped off with a max effort mile on the treadmill and some situps.

Sure, this was a busy routine which burnt a load of calories and got me working up a sweat, but I wasn’t developing strength and size, which was what I really wanted.

I was trying to cover too many bases – get strong, get big biceps, lose bodyfat, have razor abs, improve aerobic fitness (basically Crossfit).

There was too much cardio, too much unnecessary shit, and not enough time spent under a progressively heavy barbell, which was evident in my lack of real progress on the compound lifts.

If you’re new to the gym, avoid my mistake and follow a long-term training schedule which is wholly geared towards driving improvement on the main lifts, not just a random ‘what shall I do today’ programme that amounts to a whole lot of nothing.

Don’t waste money on supplements

Although the fitness industry would have you believe otherwise, you do not need supplements to get big and strong.

There is nothing in supplements that you cannot get from an adequate diet.

If you are training properly, eating properly and resting properly there is no need to throw your cash away, especially if you’re a beginner.

People that stack their cupboards high with pills and powders often do not want to hear the simple, hard-to-swallow truth:

The only way you’re getting bigger is through lifting heavy weights, maintaining a caloric surplus and perseverance.

It’s just easier to keep telling yourself that your programme is to blame or you’re not getting enough creatine or that maybe this new study from Japan which shows how eating a boiled rhino’s vagina can enhance cellular function is the answer to your training plateau.

Fact is, there’s no supplement that works as well as doggedly getting your 5RM squat up to 150kg and eating a shit tonne of meat and veg.

The only reason to take supplements is if you honestly struggle to maintain a healthy diet or you’re just too lazy to get yourself organised.

In that case, get yourself some good quality whey protein to make sure you hit a gram of protein per pound of bodyweight every day and take a multivitamin and fish oil as some general nutrition insurance.

But, honestly, how hard is it to have sardines or mackerel a few times a week instead of resorting to pills?

And do you really need a big tub of whey every month when you can get the same amount of protein from whole milk and regular meals?

And while creatine might be one of the most well-studied supplements out there, my personal experience, in over ten years of lifting, is that it delivers very little in the way of performance benefit.

And while I’m not going to fly in the face of science (I trust the research), I believe that most lifters would be better off forgetting about supplements that may or may not enhance performance by 0.05% and instead focus on something more important.

Ultimately, a good night’s sleep and a strong cup of coffee will do more for your squat PR than religiously supplementing 5g creatine every day.

Sleep!

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” used to be the adage of someone I knew when I was in my early twenties.

Well, he is dead now.

Turns out all those 3am smack sessions aren’t very good for the heart.

The point being, I guess, is that you should look after yourself, and consistently depriving yourself of sleep is a surefire way to fuck your body up.

And it should go without saying that injecting heroin is probably going to hinder progress on your 5rm deadlift.

If you’re training for any sport, getting at least 8 hours sleep every night is one of the most powerful weapons in your arsenal.

Sleep is a powerful anabolic aid that is absolutely critical to the stress/adaptation model (along with nutrition).

It is where the most potent recovery occurs, and deserves as much attention as your nutrition and training.

Don’t treat it as an inconvenience that happens at the end of your day, take it as seriously as mapping out your training schedule.

And by 8 hours, I don’t mean getting into bed at 10:30pm, scrolling on your iPhone for an hour, bashing one out, nipping for a quick wee, finally getting some shuteye around 1am, then waking up at 7 to hit ‘snooze’ every 15 minutes.

Do everything you can to ensure you’re sleeping soundly for a full eight hours – invest in a decent mattress and pillow, get some proper blinds, read a book before dozing off (a great help, apparently).

Signing off

So, there we have it, seven pieces of advice that would have spared my 18-year-old self a lot of wasted time and effort.

I apologise to those of you who were expecting a grand reveal of some powerful Soviet muscle building secrets that the Kremlin have been keeping under lock and key since 1920.

Truth is, to see results you don’t need to sacrifice a baby unicorn or commit to ten years of study in a temple in Kathmandu.

For the most part, you just need to rely on common sense, consistency and hard work – i.e. squatting heavy for a decade.

And while a lot of this stuff may elicit a “no shit” response from some – like hearing that Hitler once upended a table and punched someone in the head after losing a game of Risk – most beginners, like my 18-year-old self, fail to see the wood for the trees.

But, to strike a final philosophical point, as most articles of this nature do, if I could go back in time, would I really change everything?

No of c… YES, YES I FUCKING WOULD.

Obviously I would.

By now I would be absolutely bloody MASSIVE.

Over to you

Experienced lifters out there – what advice would you give to your 18-year-old self?

Let me know in the comments section below, I’d love to hear from you!

The post Advice To My 18-Year-Old Self appeared first on Gymtalk.

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Common Gym Phrases And What They Actually Mean

The gym can be an intimidating place.

Well, sort of.

Not as intimidating as being chained up in a Belgium sex bunker, being asked to call a coin toss by Anton Chigurh or having your CV marked up by Claude Littner.

Or being forced to sleep opposite a pickled jar containing the severed head of your murdered lover as a punishment for being unfaithful.

To be fair on Peter the Great, this was fairly mild as punishments from Russian Czars go – the equivalent, nowadays, of purposefully making your partner a rubbish cup of tea.

But, for newcomers especially, the gym can be a discomfiting environment.

As you wonder out of the changing rooms for the first time, you’ll feel like a new recruit in a buddy cop movie who’s been transferred to a department in a corrupt precinct.

You’ll get dirty looks from the tough guys free weights area (all ‘on the take’), an unhinged Mel Gibson type will accost you at the water fountain with unsolicited fitness tips and weapons-grade viagra, and there’ll be a by-the-books personal trainer trying to avenge the memory of his father who was murdered in the line of duty (crushed by a bosu ball in the steam room).

As you get to know the lay of the land you’ll pick up a few valuable titbits.

You’ll learn, for example, that the gym is a place where you can seemingly break wind with total impunity.

You’ll learn to avoid that one guy who wonders around with a Foreigner t-shirt, flip-flops and a permanent demiboner.

You’ll learn to avoid peak times where the gym floor resembles a flock of seagulls going mental over a dropped ice cream.

And you’ll also learn that in the gym there is a big difference between what people say and what they actually mean.

One wrong word and the situation will escalate quicker than a late-night confrontation with Joe Pesci in a petrol station.

“I didn’t call you a prick, Joe, I was just trying to grab a Ginsters pasty from the fridge.”

So, if you’re new to the gym and want to avoid committing any faux pas that will land you in hot water, here is a collection of common phrases and what they actually mean…

Gym lingo – translated

Are you using this?

You’re quite clearly not using this, I’m merely feigning politeness, so please get off your phone and move before I lodge this bottle of Lucozade Sport so far up your rectum you’ll be shitting electrolytes for the next six months.

Have you got many sets left?

I’ve been wanting to use this piece of equipment for the last 15 minutes and if I see you attempt one more set I’m going to burst a blood vessel in my ballbag.

Do you need this 20kg?

I’ve made the assumption just by looking at your pathetic bag-of-bones physique that you will have no use for these weights, so I’m just going to take them, deal with it you human skidmark.

Can I work in with you?

Even though the gym is empty, I am now going to annoy you by unracking your weights, making small talk about protein supplements and sweating everywhere when I could have just done something else for 10 minutes.

Can I get a spot?

You’re the only person who actually looks like they know what they’re doing in here so can you please assist me with this lift.

I’m maxing out

I’ve put far too much weight on this bar and will certainly not be hitting the prescribed reps, but I don’t want to admit this by removing any plates.

One… more… rep

I’ll shit a potato before I ever lift this weight so please get ready to step in.

It’s all you!

This is 50% me, you have no business lifting this weight, you’re wasting both of our time, and I have a good mind to drop this bar on your stupid face.

You’ve got this!

If it wasn’t for me supporting this weight you’d be going home in an ambulance with a spine that looks like a dropped burrito.

You’re looking massive!

What steroids have you been taking?

I don’t want to get too big

I no absolutely nothing about lifting weights or human physiology.

It really engages your core

I’ve learnt everything I know about weightlifting from a pullout in The Mail On Sunday entitled “Sizzling Summer Abs” and therefore believe crunches to be more effective at strengthening your core than heavy squats.

Squats are really bad for your knees

My PT qualification came free with a box of Kellog’s Crunchy Nut.

It’s really good for muscle toning

I couldn’t be much more of a cunt if I tried.

You need to confuse your muscles

I will believe anything I read – even if it’s been scrawled in human faeces on the wall of a public toilet by a blind toddler.

This machine will hep you get rid of belly fat

If someone told me that fisting your grandma burns body fat I would be the first to give it a go.

Squats/deadlift/pressing really kills my back/knee/shoulder

I can’t be bothered to work hard or spend time learning correct form so I’m just going to do some isolation exercises instead.

I leg press 400kg

I don’t want to squat or deadlift so I’m distracting myself from the real task at hand with an exercise that’s about as pointless as a clay sculpture of a dog’s colon.

I’m not lifting heavy at the moment

I have never lifted heavy in my entire life.

Lightweight baby!

Everybody look at me, look at me, I’ve watched some Ronnie Coleman YouTube videos, look at me!

I don’t go to the gym much anymore

I’ve been working out four times a week every week for the last year.

Hmm, interesting, I’ll give that a try

What kind of babbling bullshit is this?

Do you still train much?

Bloody hell you look small.

What are you lifting today?

I have nothing else to say to you but we’ve made eye contact now.

Signing off

Hopefully this decoded gym lingo will save some of you newbies from social embarrassment next time a fellow lifter strikes up a conversation with you.

Alternatively, you can just eschew all human interaction by donning a massive pair of headphones and scowling at everyone who makes eye contact with you – it works for a lot of people.

If you have any more translations of common gym phrases please get in touch via the comments section below, I’d love to hear from you!

The post Common Gym Phrases And What They Actually Mean appeared first on Gymtalk.

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Common Gym Phrases And What They Actually Mean

The gym can be an intimidating place.

Well, sort of.

Not as intimidating as being chained up in a Belgium sex bunker, being asked to call a coin toss by Anton Chigurh or having your CV marked up by Claude Littner.

Or being forced to sleep opposite a pickled jar containing the severed head of your murdered lover as a punishment for being unfaithful.

To be fair on Peter the Great, this was fairly mild as punishments from Russian Czars go – the equivalent, nowadays, of purposefully making your partner a rubbish cup of tea.

But, for newcomers especially, the gym can be a discomfiting environment.

As you wonder out of the changing rooms for the first time, you’ll feel like a new recruit in a buddy cop movie who’s been transferred to a department in a corrupt precinct.

You’ll get dirty looks from the tough guys free weights area (all ‘on the take’), an unhinged Mel Gibson type will accost you at the water fountain with unsolicited fitness tips and weapons-grade viagra, and there’ll be a by-the-books personal trainer trying to avenge the memory of his father who was murdered in the line of duty (crushed by a bosu ball in the steam room).

As you get to know the lay of the land you’ll pick up a few valuable titbits.

You’ll learn, for example, that the gym is a place where you can seemingly break wind with total impunity.

You’ll learn to avoid that one guy who wonders around with a Foreigner t-shirt, flip-flops and a permanent demiboner.

You’ll learn to avoid peak times where the gym floor resembles a flock of seagulls going mental over a dropped ice cream.

And you’ll also learn that in the gym there is a big difference between what people say and what they actually mean.

One wrong word and the situation will escalate quicker than a late-night confrontation with Joe Pesci in a petrol station.

“I didn’t call you a prick, Joe, I was just trying to grab a Ginsters pasty from the fridge.”

So, if you’re new to the gym and want to avoid committing any faux pas that will land you in hot water, here is a collection of common phrases and what they actually mean…

Gym lingo – translated

Are you using this?

You’re quite clearly not using this, I’m merely feigning politeness, so please get off your phone and move before I lodge this bottle of Lucozade Sport so far up your rectum you’ll be shitting electrolytes for the next six months.

Have you got many sets left?

I’ve been wanting to use this piece of equipment for the last 15 minutes and if I see you attempt one more set I’m going to burst a blood vessel in my ballbag.

Do you need this 20kg?

I’ve made the assumption just by looking at your pathetic bag-of-bones physique that you will have no use for these weights, so I’m just going to take them, deal with it you human skidmark.

Can I work in with you?

Even though the gym is empty, I am now going to annoy you by unracking your weights, making small talk about protein supplements and sweating everywhere when I could have just done something else for 10 minutes.

Can I get a spot?

You’re the only person who actually looks like they know what they’re doing in here so can you please assist me with this lift.

I’m maxing out

I’ve put far too much weight on this bar and will certainly not be hitting the prescribed reps, but I don’t want to admit this by removing any plates.

One… more… rep

I’ll shit a potato before I ever lift this weight so please get ready to step in.

It’s all you!

This is 50% me, you have no business lifting this weight, you’re wasting both of our time, and I have a good mind to drop this bar on your stupid face.

You’ve got this!

If it wasn’t for me supporting this weight you’d be going home in an ambulance with a spine that looks like a dropped burrito.

You’re looking massive!

What steroids have you been taking?

I don’t want to get too big

I no absolutely nothing about lifting weights or human physiology.

It really engages your core

I’ve learnt everything I know about weightlifting from a pullout in The Mail On Sunday entitled “Sizzling Summer Abs” and therefore believe crunches to be more effective at strengthening your core than heavy squats.

Squats are really bad for your knees

My PT qualification came free with a box of Kellog’s Crunchy Nut.

It’s really good for muscle toning

I couldn’t be much more of a cunt if I tried.

You need to confuse your muscles

I will believe anything I read – even if it’s been scrawled in human faeces on the wall of a public toilet by a blind toddler.

This machine will hep you get rid of belly fat

If someone told me that fisting your grandma burns body fat I would be the first to give it a go.

Squats/deadlift/pressing really kills my back/knee/shoulder

I can’t be bothered to work hard or spend time learning correct form so I’m just going to do some isolation exercises instead.

I leg press 400kg

I don’t want to squat or deadlift so I’m distracting myself from the real task at hand with an exercise that’s about as pointless as a clay sculpture of a dog’s colon.

I’m not lifting heavy at the moment

I have never lifted heavy in my entire life.

Lightweight baby!

Everybody look at me, look at me, I’ve watched some Ronnie Coleman YouTube videos, look at me!

I don’t go to the gym much anymore

I’ve been working out four times a week every week for the last year.

Hmm, interesting, I’ll give that a try

What kind of babbling bullshit is this?

Do you still train much?

Bloody hell you look small.

What are you lifting today?

I have nothing else to say to you but we’ve made eye contact now.

Signing off

Hopefully this decoded gym lingo will save some of you newbies from social embarrassment next time a fellow lifter strikes up a conversation with you.

Alternatively, you can just eschew all human interaction by donning a massive pair of headphones and scowling at everyone who makes eye contact with you – it works for a lot of people.

If you have any more translations of common gym phrases please get in touch via the comments section below, I’d love to hear from you!

The post Common Gym Phrases And What They Actually Mean appeared first on Gymtalk.

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Review: MuscleMeds Carnivor Beef Protein Isolate

This is a product we’ve been wanting to try at Gymtalk for quite some time.

Not just because it’s weird, but because of its crazy awesome nutritional profile, and the fact that it’s a protein powder made from beef.

Yes – beef.

Isolated beef.

Could it be disgusting?

Let’s find out…

Product overview

MuscleMeds were one of the first guys on the market to start selling beef protein isolate, and definitely the first to properly market it.

Although it was mainly sold in the US at first, Carnivor is now pretty widely available in the UK.

So what is beef isolate?

Well, it’s literally beef protein in its most pure isolated form, a protein powder that contains only beef, resulting in a ridiculously lean nutritional profile and a highly concentrated amino acid profile.

The powder has zero fat and zero lactose (making it another option for those who are lactose intolerant) and also contains no sugar.

Ingredients

So here’s where it might get weird.

Simply Googling “beef protein isolate” presents a huge number of articles on “the real truth about beef isolate” a.k.a “beef isolate is made from hooves” a.k.a “how beef isolate will literally turn you into a grass fed cow and you’ll be eaten by a crossfitter”.

It’s highly questionable how much of this is credible, but in a nutshell the process of making beef protein isolate seems to involve a lot of meat offcuts – i.e. the bits steak manufacturers just didn’t want to use.

And I have to say, looking at the price of this product compared to the protein content, these claims are probably true.

It’s highly unlikely that this product is made from pure isolated lean steak.

And it’s almost definitely not from grass-fed beef either, if that’s your thing.

But it’s a bit of a stupid argument against beef protein really, as many foods we consume in western diets are made from so-called “disgusting” or “weird” ingredients that might freak people out.

Like did you know BCAA powders are made from duck feather?

Ethically it’s up to you if you want to take products like these.

Regardless of manufacturing process, MuscleMeds Beef Isolate has a pretty damn good nutrient profile.

Per serving (one 36.4g scoop) this is:

Calories	120kcal
Protein	23g
Carbs (of which sugar)	8g (0g)
Fat (of which saturates)	0g (0g)

There’s also Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, Calcium, Phosphorus and Magnesium.

Carnivor also contains added BCAAs, which, combined with the high protein content, will be sure to kick you into muscle growth (provided you’re training, eating and resting properly, obviously ).

Taste and texture

Judging from some of the reviews online, the taste and texture of Carnivor has come in for a lot of criticism, but I had no problems at all.

Sure it’s a lot more of a fine powder than most whey protein, but it mixes well and tastes pretty good (I tried mint chocolate flavour).

I had no problem drinking a double serving with 450ml of water mixed in a shaker cup.

Pretty impressive considering this is powdered beef.

Effectiveness

Over the past month or so of using the product in place of post-workout whey, I’ve not really seen or felt much of a difference in recovery times compared to just using whey.

That being said, I do feel like beef isolate is much easier on the stomach.

Each time I use it I just don’t feel full from it and don’t get any bloating whatsoever (usually I’m slightly sensitive to dairy).

And due to its high protein content you don’t need to take as much at a time as with some whey products.

So if you’re very sensitive to dairy (if you fart a lot from whey protein you just might be) then this is a great option.

Value for money

MuscleMeds Carnivor comes in at the medium-ish price of around £25 per kilo.

I’d say this is a good price to pay if you’re the sort of person who needs something lactose-free that will help you build muscle.

But if you aren’t, you’ll probably be best, cost-wise, sticking to whey protein isolate, as it’s technically just as pure, but perhaps without the added BCAAs.

Summary

While we’re not sure of the muscle building benefits of MuscleMeds Carnivor compared to whey, it’s certainly a good option for those with intolerances to dairy, and is really high in protein.

Buy Carnivor Beef Protein Isolate

You can order MuscleMeds Carnivor Beef Protein Isolate by shopping here at Amazon.co.uk.

Over to you

Have you tried Carnivor?

If so, what did you make of it?

Any other comments or questions?

Please get in touch below – I’d love to hear from you.

The post Review: MuscleMeds Carnivor Beef Protein Isolate appeared first on Gym-Talk.

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Review: MuscleMeds Carnivor Beef Protein Isolate

This is a product we’ve been wanting to try at Gymtalk for quite some time.

Not just because it’s weird, but because of its crazy awesome nutritional profile, and the fact that it’s a protein powder made from beef.

Yes – beef.

Isolated beef.

Could it be disgusting?

Let’s find out…

Product overview

MuscleMeds were one of the first guys on the market to start selling beef protein isolate, and definitely the first to properly market it.

Although it was mainly sold in the US at first, Carnivor is now pretty widely available in the UK.

So what is beef isolate?

Well, it’s literally beef protein in its most pure isolated form, a protein powder that contains only beef, resulting in a ridiculously lean nutritional profile and a highly concentrated amino acid profile.

The powder has zero fat and zero lactose (making it another option for those who are lactose intolerant) and also contains no sugar.

Ingredients

So here’s where it might get weird.

Simply Googling “beef protein isolate” presents a huge number of articles on “the real truth about beef isolate” a.k.a “beef isolate is made from hooves” a.k.a “how beef isolate will literally turn you into a grass fed cow and you’ll be eaten by a crossfitter”.

It’s highly questionable how much of this is credible, but in a nutshell the process of making beef protein isolate seems to involve a lot of meat offcuts – i.e. the bits steak manufacturers just didn’t want to use.

And I have to say, looking at the price of this product compared to the protein content, these claims are probably true.

It’s highly unlikely that this product is made from pure isolated lean steak.

And it’s almost definitely not from grass-fed beef either, if that’s your thing.

But it’s a bit of a stupid argument against beef protein really, as many foods we consume in western diets are made from so-called “disgusting” or “weird” ingredients that might freak people out.

Like did you know BCAA powders are made from duck feather?

Ethically it’s up to you if you want to take products like these.

Regardless of manufacturing process, MuscleMeds Beef Isolate has a pretty damn good nutrient profile.

Per serving (one 36.4g scoop) this is:

Calories	120kcal
Protein	23g
Carbs (of which sugar)	8g (0g)
Fat (of which saturates)	0g (0g)

There’s also Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, Calcium, Phosphorus and Magnesium.

Carnivor also contains added BCAAs, which, combined with the high protein content, will be sure to kick you into muscle growth (provided you’re training, eating and resting properly, obviously ).

Taste and texture

Judging from some of the reviews online, the taste and texture of Carnivor has come in for a lot of criticism, but I had no problems at all.

Sure it’s a lot more of a fine powder than most whey protein, but it mixes well and tastes pretty good (I tried mint chocolate flavour).

I had no problem drinking a double serving with 450ml of water mixed in a shaker cup.

Pretty impressive considering this is powdered beef.

Effectiveness

Over the past month or so of using the product in place of post-workout whey, I’ve not really seen or felt much of a difference in recovery times compared to just using whey.

That being said, I do feel like beef isolate is much easier on the stomach.

Each time I use it I just don’t feel full from it and don’t get any bloating whatsoever (usually I’m slightly sensitive to dairy).

And due to its high protein content you don’t need to take as much at a time as with some whey products.

So if you’re very sensitive to dairy (if you fart a lot from whey protein you just might be) then this is a great option.

Value for money

MuscleMeds Carnivor comes in at the medium-ish price of around £25 per kilo.

I’d say this is a good price to pay if you’re the sort of person who needs something lactose-free that will help you build muscle.

But if you aren’t, you’ll probably be best, cost-wise, sticking to whey protein isolate, as it’s technically just as pure, but perhaps without the added BCAAs.

Summary

While we’re not sure of the muscle building benefits of MuscleMeds Carnivor compared to whey, it’s certainly a good option for those with intolerances to dairy, and is really high in protein.

Buy Carnivor Beef Protein Isolate

You can order MuscleMeds Carnivor Beef Protein Isolate by shopping here at Amazon.co.uk.

Over to you

Have you tried Carnivor?

If so, what did you make of it?

Any other comments or questions?

Please get in touch below – I’d love to hear from you.

The post Review: MuscleMeds Carnivor Beef Protein Isolate appeared first on Gym-Talk.

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Historical Figures We’d Like As Gym Buddies

A good gym buddy can be worth their weight in gold.

Someone to shout words of encouragement as you struggle on that final rep, someone to blame when you accidentally let one off by the water fountain, someone to hold deep and meaningfuls with between sets (what’s the best sex position for building muscle, is the new male yoga instructor “Jeff” a predatory homosexual, is “skullsmasher” an appropriate nickname for your penis), someone to hold you tenderly in the shower and wipe your tears after a failed max lift attempt.

Find the right one and you’ll share an unbreakable bond for life.

Find the wrong one and you’ll miss out on one of the only meaningful relationships you’ll ever truly have – not to mention risk waking up one morning to find a stranger’s rectum clamped over your mouth like the facehugger from Alien (“gym buddy” is also code for “bum fuck buddy”, as I discovered during the research for this article).

What’s more, the benefits of having a reliable, plantonic gym buddy extend beyond just mutual backslapping and changing room japery.

Science has shown that working out with a partner can yield more gains than working out alone.

A study of the Oxford University Boat Club rowing team, for example, demonstrated that those rowing in unison released more endorphins and rowed harder and faster compared with rowers who trained on their own.

“That’s all well and good,” you may say, “but I can’t find someone to go to Nando’s with let alone commit to a brutal schedule of early starts, heavy squatting and constant meal prepping”.

Well, what if I said to you that, a la Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, I could transport you back into the past so you that could herd up a bunch of famous historical figures to choose from?

Unfortunately, owing to the fundamental laws of space and time, I’m not able to action this, but, if I could, here’s who I’d recommend…

Maximus Decimus Meridius

A good gym buddy needs to be someone who earns your trust and respect, someone to look up and aspire to.

Who better to fill this position than Maximus Decimus Meridius, protagonist of Gladiator and the ultimate alpha male.

(Let’s just forget for a second that this is a completely fictional character.)

This is a man so masculine that he breathes woodsmoke, deodorises with the blood of Germanic peasants and drinks his own urine simply because he finds the taste refreshing.

He is strong, confident, mentally tough, loyal to a fault, and, crucially for a gym buddy, not afraid to step in if some bellend starts breaching gym etiquette.

Maximus would answer to a stricter (some might say harsher, some might say fairer) brand of justice in the gym:

Someone curling in the squat rack?

Perforate their skull with a javelin.

Someone playing their music too loud?

Tie them to the horns of a wild bull and parade them through the streets.

Someone hogging three pieces of equipment to do a wanky triple superset at peak time?

For this gravest of sins, take revenge the only way the ancient world knew how: rape and murder their family and serve their corpses for dinner at a banquet.

Not only would having Maximus as a gym buddy elevate your social standing, but his antics would make for great after-dinner speech material: “One time one of the regulars started taunting Maximus about his dead wife so Maximus responded by caving his cranium in with a 50kg dumbbell, you really had to be there”.

On the down side, however, Maximums does tend to take himself a bit too seriously at times, and will occasionally be glimpsed telling anyone who will listen – the work experience receptionist or the engineer who’s come to fix to gent’s toilets – that he is father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife and will have his revenge in this life or the next.

“That’s great mate, but you’ve got to learn to start flushing the toilet…”

Most likely to be seen:

Impaling punching bags with a trident or weeping about his murdered family between sets on the lat-pulldown machine.

Genghis Khan

What list of dream gym buddies would be complete without at least one maniacal despot?

Despite being one of the cruellest men ever to roam the earth (we’ll quickly glaze over some of his weaker character traits such as the genocide of 40 million people), no-one could accuse Genghis Khan of lacking drive and ambition, two of the most important qualities you’ll need in a gym buddy.

Some Instagram-famous fitness celebs might proffer their ability to perform tricep pushdowns with immaculate form as an example of #dedication and #hustle.

I would counter that by saying (a) you’re wrong (b) you’re a cunt and (c) a better display of dedication is surely building an empire which spans a quarter of the earth’s total land mass.

If you team up with Khan in a bid to build superior muscle and strength, you can be sure that this mad Mongol won’t let anything stand in your way.

If he had no qualms in murdering his half-brother at 14 years old in an argument over a fish, just imagine what he would do if he found someone refusing to let the pair of you work in for a set of deadlifts.

Khan was also a keen womaniser (often taking the term “ladykiller” in its most literal sense) who, according to predictions made by Russian scientists, has spawned approximately 16 million male descendants.

Most likely to be seen:

Monopolising the global gym market with his own chain of health clubs and murdering anyone who stands in his way.

Lord Byron

A good gym buddy should also be a good wing man, and who better to have by your side when chatting to the opposite sex than Lord Byron, the wild-child Romantic poet with a club foot and a penchant for fucking everything that moves.

The man didn’t discriminate – he was a notorious bisexual, a keen sodomite, and even partial to a bit of incest (he fucked his half-sister Augusta).

Byron, who was also featured in our list of Historical Figures Who Didn’t Need To Lift, was a tremendously powerful lover, with a cock like a pneumatic drill and an ejaculation so powerful that it was rumoured that one jet of his piping hot man lava could be used to power a water turbine for half an hour.

Yes, Byron will probably ruffle a few of the regulars up the wrong way – using Viagra as a pre-workout, waltzing around in a pashmina while loudly quoting lines from “She Walks In Beauty”, trying to install scented candles in the men’s changing rooms, chanting relentlessly from an Aramaic spellbook – but if you want to impress the ladies from Tuesday morning yoga class, there’s no-one better.

This is a man so seductive that he could bring a woman to spontaneous unsolicited orgasm just by talking in iambic pentameter.

Most likely to be seen:

Fingering the Zumba instructor in the steam room.

Nelson Mandela

Tired of gym buddies letting you down at the last minute?

A psychologist might reason that certain gym buddies are late or forget to turn up when they say they will because of Time-Based Prospective Memory (TBPM) – in other words, the way their brain is wired to manage time is to blame.

For me, a simpler, one-word prognosis suffices: cunt.

Instead, what you need is someone loyal and unfaltering, with principles and conviction… how about a man who spent 27 years in prison for fighting for a free and democratic society?

If there’s one bloke who’s not going to text you “Sorry dude won’t be able to make it today, feeling a bit iffy” five minutes after you’ve already got to the gym, it’s Nelson Mandela.

While not an obvious choice for a gym buddy (all those years of incarceration did little for his pec and deltoid development), Nelson Mandela had extraordinary levels of inner strength, something essential in a workout companion.

And while you’re going to need more than inner strength to move a heavy barbell, Mandela was also no stranger to hard work.

To get the most from your workouts, you’re going to need a gym buddy who’s not afraid to face up to a session of heavy squats, and Mandela’s incarceration on Robben Island where he spent long hours breaking rocks into gravel more than proves his mettle.

And if his CNS can withstand 27 years of being beaten and tortured, it can withstand a few mesocycles of Wendler’s 5/3/1.

Mandela was also into his fitness, practising stationary running, fingertip push-ups, sit-ups, squats and various other calisthenics in his prison cell every day, so he’s going to be wholly onboard with your plan to get swole.

Most likely to be seen:

Posing for selfies and then having to explain that actually, no, he’s not Morgan Freeman.

Albert Einstein

What Einstein lacks in muscle building experience, he more than makes for in a willingness to bring new ideas to the table.

This is an essential trait in a gym buddy, as you want someone to push you in new directions and bring variety to your regimen, and who better to have as your ideas man than the greatest theoretical physicist of all time.

Ask him to spend a bit of time reading up on the latest muscle building research and he’ll no doubt return with a regimen so advanced and powerful that it’ll be instantly banned under the Geneva Convention.

While some gym buddies may be swayed by the latest article they’ve read or by some new fitness YouTuber, Einstein will rely solely on his own empirical research which cuts right through the bullshit.

Sure, this may raise a few eyebrows from some of your gym mates, but who would you rather have whispering in your ear about periodisation and autoregulation, Albert Einstein or The Lean Machines off YouTube?

One revolutionised the way we view space, time, mass and energy, the others make videos on “Extreme Diving With Tom Daley” and “The Best Lady Gap Workout”.

Most likely to be seen:

Making puns about mass and pissing off Crossfitters by calculating the speed of light on their WOD whiteboard.

Jesus Christ

Forget dying for our sins, the son of God’s true calling is undoubtedly being the perfect gym buddy.

Weedy enough to make you look massive by comparison but with the ability to work bodybuilding miracles on your behalf – and who doesn’t want a gym buddy that can turn water into protein shakes?

Plus, if Christ can spit on blind people to make them see, just imagine the nutritional value that one globule of his saliva could have – you’d never need to buy another supplement again.

Although he is mostly remembered for easter eggs and having a really cool beard, Jesus could also go into full-power beast mode at the flick of a switch, making him the perfect person to have by your side when you’re going for a new squat PR.

Indeed, when he discovered a temple to his dad had been overrun with moneylenders and animals, he went, for want of a better expression, fucking mental, upturning tables and chairs with the ferocity of a level 5 hurricane.

Imagine Nigel Farage finding out that his favourite pub has been taken over by a Bulgarian family who plan to turn it into a HIV treatment clinic for lesbian Muslims, and you’ll get some idea of how badly Christ Hulked out.

Most likely to be seen:

Getting thrown out by security for trying to deliver a sermon during morning spin class.

Signing off

If you enjoyed this blog post, be sure to check out Charlie’s piece on Fictional Characters We’d Like As Gym Buddies (which I completely ripped off in the writing of this article).

Who would you choose to be your dream gym buddy?

Let me know in the comments section below – I’d love to hear from you!

The post Historical Figures We’d Like As Gym Buddies appeared first on Gym-Talk.

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