Monday, April 12, 2010

Heavy Duty Bodybuilding - The Thinking Person's Guide to Physical Training - PART 2

"For best gains, they recommend two and even three sessions per day six days a week, with the seventh day off - for sabbath, I suppose. Very scientific." - Mike Mentzer, Heavy Duty I

If you have viewed Malcolm Gladwell's video which I embedded in my last post (and I sincerely hope that you have, since it is both funny AND thought provoking) you would have gleaned an insight into human behaviour, which while not always true, is too often the case, and therefore rather sad; too many of us often think and behave like the stereotypical LEMMING!

Of Lemmings and Men

You are no doubt familiar with the rodent of which I speak. This is the same small, furry creature that is believed (unsubstantiated however) to commit mass suicide as part of their migration. The ole, "Well everybody was else was doing it," philosophy.

Like the "worm in horseradish" mentioned in Part 1, too many of us (and I certainly have been guilty on occassion) have succumbed to this "group thinking" approach. We get caught up in the mob mentality, getting seduced by what seemingly everyone else (of course it is not really everyone, it just feels that way) is thinking and begin to take on their beliefs. Once this occurs, then we are really in the horseradish, we start to make decisions, and worse, take action based on erroneous truths - and down the rabbit hole we go!

Sanity is Not Statistical

Years ago, I heard a speaker deliberate on this concept, "Sanity is not Statistical" as it relates to business and life. He cited the example of the Wright Brothers, those two lone voices of their time who fervently believed that man could fly. The very interesting part of this conversation, that truly gave me cause to ponder, was a statistic that he offered. The speaker said that at the time of the Wright Brothers, the absolute overwhelming opinion, AROUND THE WORLD, was that men could not fly. Literally hundreds of thousands of individuals believed this; people opined this belief in town halls, churches, newspapers, and wherever they gathered. Learned men gave explanations: if man moved past a certain speed his internal organs would implode/explode; if man was meant to fly he would have been born with wings (with accompanying anatomical/biological charts and theories, I understand), just to name two. However, time has borne who was correct; the two versus the countless, regardless of how many voices they had.

Context Switching

And so Mentzer noticed about bodybuilders, their teachers, gurus, and their elder statesmen. A little like Lemmings (OK that may be a little harsh), but certainly within the realm of sanity is not statistical, the aforementioned clung to the old axiom of "everyone is unique so everyone's training must be differnt" with a little of the ole "if one aspirin is good, 12 must be better" context switching (if training once per day, three days per week is good, then 3 times per day 6 days per week must be better)thrown in for good measure. After these ingredients were all included in the stew, what was the result? A veritable den of confustion for the young and novice trainees; since each "expert" had their own version of the above,bewilderment, chaos and desperation filled the hearts of young bodbuilders everywhere.

A Sane Voice In The Wilderness

Part 3 ties it all together - I PROMISE!

AG Spinelli

No comments:

Post a Comment