Helped by What I Didn't Know

Further to my previous post by Skip LaCour, let me relate a story about my early training.

I started training at a World Gym in New Zealand. It wasn't a 'bodybuilders gym'; but it was pretty hardcore. For example, there was a bucket behind the counter for leg days. You were expected to train till you puked!

Everyday there were regular blokes - large blokes, to be sure - squatting 5-6 plates per side of the bar (220-260kg), benching 3-4 plates (140-180kg), Leg Pressing 500-600kg, Shoulder Pressing 50-60kg dumbells and deadlifting 6-7 plates (260-300kg). That was 'normal' in this gym and so everybody just did what was normal.

And being naive New Zealand, people barely knew what steroids were let alone used them! Lifting big was just NORMAL!

Then I moved to Australia and trained at a TINY, council-owned gym in Melbourne. Being Council owned, literally nobody trained there. All I knew was what I'd seen in New Zealand and read in the magazines. And in the magazines all I heard about was everybody doing 800lb deadlifts and squats; and every American teenager seemed to bench press 500lb. And that made sense given what I'd seen in New Zealand!

None of it was true, of course. But I knew no different. I believed it and I believed that I was the one with the problem because I couldnt lift those weights.

So I ate and trained like a madman, fueled with anger about how pathetically weak I was! I couldn't even bench 300lb (at 17years old) when the guys in the magazines did CURLS with 300lb! I SUCKED! So I trained and pushed to MAKE myself able to do what I believed everybody else did!

Then I met a guy a week before a bodybuilding contest. He convinced me to enter looking like I just happened to look from the heavy training I did. I won the teen division and beat the current Australasian Champ easily!

Then at 19 I entered the National Powerlifting Champs, won my division and broke the Australian Teen Deadlift record by 60kg! I pulled 300kg and everybody thought that was phenomenal. I thought it sucked! I still believed everybody except me deadlifted 800lb and any less was rubbish.

Fortunately, I maintained that belief. I didnt lower my standards and stop lifting heavy because most people DON'T do 800lb deadlifts. I saw that everybody COULD do it but was too damned lazy; their expectations of themselves too damned LOW!

Today the situation is more pitiful than ever! I rarely see people lift more than TWO plates per side of a barbell; let alone six! Guys are using more drugs than ever to build naturally-achievable physiques. Natural bodybuilders look like cadavers and then accuse anybody with muscle of being a 'drug-cheat'.

People honestly believe its not POSSIBLE to build muscle just because they failed to do it lifting lighter weights than small girls lift at Biologic Labs! Of course its possible! But you gotta do the right work: big weights = big muscles. Little weights = ... nothing.

God gave every healthy male who bothers to lift weights a 140kg bench and 220kg deadlift. Thats EASY and anything less is embarrassing! Similarly, small girls (50-60kg) should easily expect a 50-60kg bench and 120-140kg deadlift. If you don't believe you can lift such weights then you just answered why you are failing in the gym!