Starting out – every young lifter makes a ton of mistakes. It’s an overload of anabolic information and these mistakes tend to hinder growth. If you could go back in time and tell your younger self 3 things to achieve gains faster… what would you say? Or… would you even say anything? Let’s get into this…
Do you remember your early days in the gym?
Walking in and only seeing giants, iron, steel and vinyl – watching the biggest men you’ve ever seen lifting ungodly amounts of weight dressed in their baggiest sweatpants and cut off sweatshirts. All yelling and screaming while they performed feats of the strength you didn’t even know where possible.
Young lifters tend to have two reactions when first stepping foot inside a gym: they either were intimidated and decided that the environment wasn’t for them – or they were hooked and became voracious consumers of information. Just like in life – in the world of lifting – knowledge is power.
I was the latter…
I remember walking in and the smell of oxidized iron hit me like a mack truck – it just smelled, well… right. I watched as one of our local gym heroes back then (his name was Big Mike) was performing deadlifts. He was wearing zebra-stripped pants, a tank, a sweatshirt with the neck cut out, a bandana and the widest leather belt I’d ever seen – he looked like a comic book character – and was lifting more weight than I’d ever seen.
An Overload of Anabolic Information
To a 14-year-old me – he looked like he was lifting two tons – but in all actuality…
It was just 405lbs.
He had a buddy slapping his back and Mike chalked up his hands and stepped up to the bar like he was King Kong. He made deliberate grips on the bar before growling like a beast before performing 5 reps – each one slamming the weights down on the rubber mats – until dropping it on his last one as he let out a guttural scream as he high-fived his training partner.
It was awesome – and I wanted to do that. So, I started buying every bodybuilding magazine I could find. If I saw a workout – I tried it…
And there was my downfall.
I experimented too much – mixing volume with Heavy Duty with drop sets and negatives. I was a mishmash of techniques rolled up into a ball of stupidity and dreams of gains.
Had I ventured into lifting smart – I would have saved myself a heap of time and a heap of pain.
If I could go back and talk to 14-year-old me and tell him 3 things to make sure he got bigger, faster – I totally would. And here’s what I’d say…
Technique Over All
Man… knowing how important technique is in my younger years would have saved me a lot of joint pain. It also would have saved me a lot of emotional pain – as I KILLED my growth.
If I knew that strict form would be better for adding size and strength and just lifting heavy weight with semi-good form – my joints wouldn’t ache on a daily basis.
So, if I could go back in time and say, “Shawn, trust me – lower the weight and go stricter with your form”….
I’d be in a much better place.
Well, maybe a more settled place, aesthetically speaking. Though, are we EVER big enough for our liking? I could be Markus Ruhl’s size – and I’d still find flaws…
However, I’d be closer to where I’ve always wanted to be – and again – in a lot less pain on a daily basis.
Yes… Diet Matters
When I first started going to gym – I was in awe of guys like Big Jim and his crew. They were all massive in my eyes – and I wanted to look just like them. So, guess who I went to for nutritional advice?
And do you know what they told me?
I’m not exaggerating here, “Eat a lot of meat and as many calories as you can. If you want to get big – you’ve got to get calories.”
So, I did what they did. Breakfast was about 8 eggs, a potato, as much milk as I could drink and about half a loaf of toast, buttered with jelly. Lunch? 3-4 sandwiches – which could be ham & cheese, roast beef, bologna or peanut butter and jelly – potato chips, as many of the cafeteria milks that I could buy… and some days, a donut or 3 after. Dinner was more confined to what my mom would make – and growing up in an Italian household – you can guess what that was.
So, yeah, I was getting bigger – just in the wrong way.
I would tell that version of me, “When it comes to eating – eat mostly protein, avoid processed meats and carbohydrates though. Eat beef, chicken, eggs, natural carbs like potatoes and rice, veggies and fruit. Stop eating a loaf of bread a day – it’s going to give you love handles.”
Do Cardio!
Something else Big Mike’s crew told me?
“Never do cardio. It makes you small. If you want to get big – you’ve got to save all your calories to build muscle – not burn it off.”
So, I never did cardio – except when football season was coming around and I start doing sprints at the beach.
Man, was THAT a disservice.
So, I’d tell younger me, “Cardio won’t make you small. If you’re lifting and getting the protein you need – you’ll be fine. Cardio is great for your heart, circulation and lungs. Don’t listen to Big Mike.”
So, those would be the 3 tips I’d tell a young me…
What would you tell your younger self?
Or…
Are the mistakes we made important to teach us how to do things right?
It’s a pickle, isn’t it?
All we can do now is pass our wisdom down to the younger generations…
But unlike Big Mike – we’ll pass on the CORRECT information.
“We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.” – George Bernard Shaw
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