A family reunion at the gym!
We finally pulled together a Wiedenbach trip to NY, using my dad’s 75th birthday as an opportunity to all gather here.
Visiting the gym was obviously the highlight of the trip. Basically, things came full circle since my dad was my first weightlifting coach back in the late 80s
We were going through all new toys , making fun of how crappy the equipment was when we started.
But what baffled me is that every sport has made tremendous strides in terms of training since 1990.
Back then, soccer teams had a libero, goalies never left the box, backstrokers did not swim underwater, Greg LeMond was the first cyclist with a triathlon handle, snowboarding wasn’t a thing… you get the idea.
Every sport has evolved but bodybuilding. The same workouts/ exercises from the 80s are seen as the holy grail.
In no particular order, here are the most braindead defenses of said workout programs.
1. We always did it like that.
2. In order to grow you must bench for chest, squats for quads, deadlift for back because these are compound exercises and compounds are king.
3. Look at Mr. X, he looks great and that is what he did.
This is complete nonsense and has ruined thousands of physiques.
The fitness world never moved away from the concept of doing exercises toward the idea of training a muscle.
Let me elaborate: Every sport trains for a particular outcome, be it scoring goals , swimming faster, jumping higher etc .
Nobody would ever just throw a ball without aiming at the basket (I hope).
Yet, this is what you find in any given gym at any given time: trainees like lemmings doing exercises because they think they should be doing them, not because they actually understand what they are doing or trying to achieve.
At this point, you are literally lobing golf balls at the ocean.
What is the solution?
Like any sport, we need to figure out what we want out of our training. 99% want a stimulus to get bigger or get leaner while keeping muscle. In order to change any muscle, you need to overload it.
Note: you need to overload the target muscle, not doing stuff that puts stress somewhere.
Instead of just blindly doing exercises, think what your target muscles function is and train it accordingly
Next : what does training a muscle actually mean? Basically to shorten it maximally. Here is where things break down on a more individual level : you must find out which exercises allows you to get great contraction
The compound movements are actually not all that great since most trainees shift away from the target area in order to move more weight or get more reps.
So be the educated gym goer vs the follower!
Which muscle am I training?
What is the function?
How do I maximize this muscle’s output?
If you need help, hire a professional ( us)!
Your team from 57th Street!
Maik