How One Person, Namely Me, Could Be A Beginner For 16 Years

What person just starts down the right path to anything? Hardly
any of us The first time we are introduced to structured
learning is in kindergarten That type of learning follows us
into grade school, middle school, high school and maybe college
So why is it that so many beginners just “do stuff?” It’s not
like we are born with the instincts to even tie shoes without
somebody showing us the way
At 16, I didn’t know what to do I started reading this book by
Bob Paris, and some Muscle and Fitness issues But I knew even
then it wasn’t natural and that I would never take any drugs to
propel myself to what I wanted Those books had some good stuff
in them but it wasn’t exactly written for me as a beginner I
almost felt like in order to be in shape and to be big, you just
had to be that way naturally I’ll be you can guess what
happened next
I did some more stuff No structure In fact, up until I was 27
years old, I basically did what all beginners do Just stuff
Maybe a heavy bench session here and there, just shooting for
whatever reps I could get No idea what I had to previously No
structured training program and no idea of nutrition other then
it’s common sense not to eat candy all day and I needed to eat
or eat less if I wanted to make changes Needless to say
Nothing changed That’s right Imagine, yourself doing something
since you were 16 years old and at age 27 you were “fit” but not
really at your goal, not really that big and not anywhere close
to what you wanted to accomplish And yet guys, who worked out
maybe 2 years, were exactly where you wanted to be Moreover
you saw plenty of people cheating their way to the top I
couldn’t even figure out a good diet let along contemplate
anything more complex
Make no mistake I was frustrated And the reason I was
frustrated for all those years was that I never started out in
kindergarten and worked my way up My point is
If people take classes to learn another language, and go to
school to learn a trade, and pay an instructor to help them
drive, what makes working out and obtaining a goal any
different? Let me break some news to you
Eating healthy is NOT common sense Working out is NOT common
sense
That’s right I said it The reason I was frustrated was mainly
that I thought you just hit the weights and got bigger Trust
me, I had some really intense weight sessions And yet I might
have worked at 110% and blew it the minute I left the gym
Okay, so there’s the beginner who has never worked out but
learns about it, gets the nutrition down, understands that,
finds a training program and starts out In 2 years, this person
is advanced
On the other hand, there’s me, who after 16 years was physically
not a beginner but mentally still was a beginner
Can you see my frustration?
But my problem is your opportunity
You see, if you knew what I know now, and trust me when I say
there’s no big secrets, you’d be a beginner for a lot less time
You’d have to work hard but not quite as hard and you’d know why
you made some changes and why you didn’t
Here’s more,
My mom used to cook dinners every night I wanted to get bigger
I just ate enough so I wasn’t hungry and that was it Now that’s
fine if I wanted to maintain, but here I had an idea and image
in my head and couldn’t get to it I had no idea what nutrition
really was all about I didn’t know how much I should even eat
to get bigger?
That’s like getting a destination, no GPS, no map and no
directions How long would it take you to find that town if you
just got in the car and started driving? After 16 years you
might get lucky and find it or you might just be chasing the
Road to El Dorado
It’s simple really Everybody wants to sell you a secret But
here’s the real secret and here’s how I stumbled on it
I found a workout program called Max-OT Finally, a very
structured workout program What to do, when to do it and how
And it told me to lift heavy It also gave me a tiny insight
into eating right But not enough Somehow I got lucky and found
a Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle book I printed it out And that
was it
That was my ah-ha moment
The secret was KNOWLEDGE
Let me repeat that
KNOWLEDGE
Nothing I’ve run across today is a big secret It’s not like
nobody is telling anybody about this What the problem seems to
be is that beginners don’t know where to start and they don’t
think they need any help So at some point they get very
frustrated and end up quitting or losing sight Not to mention
the sheer wealth of information on the Internet in an
unstructured manner is mind boggling So what if all this
information is on a bodybuilding forum In 34,567 posts, with
9,567 members Let me take the hex number and make it readable
to the human eye
If I took 12 million pages of information, some horrible, some
bad, some good and some true gold and threw it all over the
house, took a blower to it and scattered every paper all over,
that is what you have right now
It would take you 2 years or more to go thru each page to find
out what information was good, how many others confirmed that to
be true and then you’d have to make your own table of contents
and put it all together
Just because it’s out there doesn’t mean much if it’s not good,
it’s not structured and it’s not written for you
Here’s what I’ve learned in just 2 years:
* What I need to eat in order to reach my goals and how to
figure that out easily and quickly with just basic high school
math
* How I need to train and how less is actually more
* Why being controlled and having excellent form gives me 50%
more gains then the guy/gal next to me who drops the weight on
the bottom half of the movement
* How I can measure my progress easily and quickly and best of
all privately So that I know where I’ve been and how close I
am to getting there
* That not all carbs are the same
* There’s such a thing as good fats and by taking a fat pill I
can lose weight
The truth is
I tried tons of workout programs But my main failure wasn’t
necessarily the routines I was doing but the lack of knowledge I
had Can you imagine what it would be like to take 16 years to
learn how to tie your shoe? Well that’s what I felt I wanted
something so bad that I tried it all
Heck, I even skipped dinners (skipping meals is a no-no) on
weekends because I was too busy and tried protein shakes that
didn’t mix well with water to put on weight
So it all adds up to this
I was a beginner for roughly 16 years And while not physically
a beginner I didn’t know what the heck I was doing Reading
magazines by companies with an agenda is a horrible way to
figure it out And reading books by professionals who took paths
and risk I would never take is also a waste of time
Which is why I’m writing
I’ve finally figured it out And I know I’m not alone because I
run a bodybuilding forum, and a fitness site and I get 5-10
e-mails or posts a day with people just like me Who want
something and have no idea how to get there I know they will
try everything and many of them will quit And a few will go on
to struggle for years until they finally realize the secret to
getting this dream is understanding the nutrition, the training
and the supplements
Trust me, nobody wants to be a beginner for 16 years

Tags | bench, common, instincts, Magazine, mistake, muscle, nutrition, result, shoes, stuff