Training Forum: This is a discussion on (Best of Meso) Best of JohnSmith articles within the Bodybuilding forums, part of the extensive steroid information at MESO-Rx; TOPIC 14: TRAINING ON AAS
ive heard quite a few stories lately about injuries of the muscular and tendon tearing ...
ive heard quite a few stories lately about injuries of the muscular and tendon tearing type while on AAS lately. had an aquaintence thats not on meso also tear a bicep a couple of days ago... was up about 40lbs on curls after 5 weeks on IP susp/prop and the thing just tore in half.
well ive conversed with many of you in the past about my feelings that its better to up the volume of training while on juice than it is the intensity and poundages, and the increased ability of the body to keep gains if its done this way. ive also heard many people that IM me or email me express disbelief when they hear me say that im in week 5 or 6 of a cycle and havnt tried a new max yet.
but heres the thing. i really believe that its inviting injury to push the poundages early in a cycle, and its unneccessary also. add sets, add reps, add workouts, add volume. do this for the first 2/3 or 3/4 of the cycle. let your body get used to the new levels of muscular tension being developed. add a reasonable amount to your max, or your 5 rep max, or whatever at the end of the cycle... when your ready for it, and not as soon as you can do it.
im not going to go on and on about this, but i really think if people were more patient, and more willing to stick to a plan instead of looking for that quick ego boost of benching or curling 10 more lbs as soon as that juice hits their system, then they would have a lot less chanced of getting hurt.
let me just piss off a number of people right off the bat by saying that i totally disagree with anyone who says that food is as important as training in growing muscle.
ive heard a great number of people assert this, and its just crap, in my opinion. i know so damn many people that eat totally like crap, yet train hard and gain... but i dont know anyone who gains without training hard, unless they are a rank beginner, and thats a whole other story, since a beginner wint have to eat right to gain either.
now, to back this up a bit, let me say that the most elite athletes in the world have notoriously bad dietary habits. yeah, thats right. those elite weightlifters, skiiers, wrestlers, etc, eat like crap. if there is any common ground amoung all the sports that have resident athletes at the olympic training center, its the concern over getting decent food into the athletes. most of the top throwers i have known ate fast food, and not enough of it most of the time... most powerlifters eat like crap. if there is anything that elite olympic lifters ahve in common, its smoking, and worrying more about what beer they are going to drink than what they are having for dinner.
but, you might say, this may very well prove that gaining strength, skill, endurance, and even muscle mass isnt really tied to a perfect diet, as long as you get ennough calories... BUT bodybuilding is different because of the low bodyfat required while maintaining high amounts of muscle mass.
well let me ask you this. what stops more people from attaining a physique that looks like a bodybuilder, not enough muscle, or too much fat... and which is easier to remedy? the answer is obvious. going from 160lbs of lean body mass to 230lbs of lean body mass is a lot harder than going from 15% bodyfat to 7% bodyfat.
if your not ready to accept this, then answer this question. lets say that i was a magic genie, and could give you either the muscle mass and of ronnie coleman, or his bodyfat level. now, if i gave you his muscle mass, youd still be as fat as you are now, on top of all that muscle, and would have to lose the fat to look like him. if i gave you his bodyfat level, you would still have your present muscle mass and would have to gain the muscle yourself to look like him. which would you choose? if you didnt pick the muscle, your kidding yourself.
so what have i said so far... first, that getting big and strong, while undoubtedly helped along by a good diet, arent at all dependant on teh "scientific" and exacting diet plans that most people would hold up as ideal, in fact, getting big and strong seems to happen on a frequent basis to people whose only concern with food is that they get enough of it and that it tasts tood...
and second, that getting really big, and probably pretty strong as well, is the hardest part of being a bodybuilder. staying lean, or getting lean, are both not easy, but they arent the main challenge to the guy just starting out who want s to step onstage someday.
so there you have it... training, what you do and how hard you do it, is the most important thing in bodybuilding as in any sport. food, rest, other recovery techniques, self confidence boosters, EVERYTHING else, in fact, are just there to support the training. the training is the main thing.
i hear a lot of guys who want to bring up specific body parts, like chest, or biceps, or calves, or whatever, to match the rest of the body.
now sometimes, when they talk about this, especially when they are talkinga bout legs, you find that they arent training very hard and they just plain need to train harder. but it aint very often you hear guys wanting to bring up the legs or back, no matter how stick legged or thin they are from front to back. no, usually they want to bring up the chest or arms, and usually yooull find that they are already training these bodyparts pretty hard.
well, theres nothing wrong with trying new things, and progress can be made, though with arms in particular progress is usually made with doing less and eating more, but thats besides the point. where i see people derailing their overall traininng plan... is when they get so damn focussed on one little thing that isnt up to par, that their overall training suffers.
lets examine some facts. most people dont have ideal genetics. many people, almost all people in fact, have at least one bodypart which will NEVER match the rest of their physique. if you had perfect genetics youd be standing alongside ronnie coleman, but there arent many like him. so chances are, that your weak point, take your arms, for instance, will never be a strong point. some people just werent born with the ability to have "purty" arms, just like some people werrnt born with the ability to have big calves... you can get them better, but theyll never match the rest of your body.
ive seen so many people bang their head against a wall and just short circut their entire training plan to try to turn a weak point into a strong point, it just makes me sick. now, im not saying that because you didnt have arms that ballooned to 20 inches in a year, to give up. hell no. what im saying is that sometimes you need to just face reality. say youve been training 5 years, know what your doing, and your big and strong, but although your triceps are fairly strong, they jyust arent massive and they are short, they dont "hang over the elbow" so to speak... then dont short-circut the resto f your training trying anything to get big triceps. deal with the fact that nature gave you a short muscle belly in the tricep, and it aint going to be your strong point because of it.
i guess what im trying to say is, deal with what nature gave you. make the best of what you have, but dont give yourself a nervous breakdown ovr trying to CHANGE what you have. that cant be done. you can improve your body, but not change its structure.
personally, im a big guy... but ive got a big bone structure. my wrists are almost 10inches. so i can get pretty big... but ill never look "freaky" like some of the guys with real little joints and tiny waists. thats fine. my arms have always been big, even before i trained. they are about 23inches now, and i dont train them. but even back when i trained my chest a lot, it was never "developed" in the inner or upper regions to much extent... yeah i did exercises that hit this part, but it just never grew much, hell my biceps grew more from incline benches than my upper chest. ive got big knee jjoints, and long tendons on the vastus lateralis... so ill never have that "muscle hanging over ther knee" look that some do, even though my things are 34inches. just not my structure. but i dont derail my training trying desperately to bring up what i am never going to get. sure, id like to have "prettier" legs i guess, and i would like to have smaller biceps and more upper chest and shoulder muscle (more specific to my sport)... but this is the way my body is and i cant change it. ive trained a lot of different ways and for several different sports, and with the exception of getting bigger, my overall shape hasnt changed all that much. i had big arms, a wide, fairly flat chest with more lower chest than upper chest, big traps, and wide shoulders but not as much front delt as youd think... as a powerlifter, a thrower, a highland games athlete, an olympic lifter, etc. i had this structure when i trained arms all the time, i had it when i never trained arms. i had it when i concentrated on flat benches as a powerlifter, incline benches a s a thrower, and did no benches a s an olympic lifter. i had it when i could barely military press 250lbs as a powerlifter, i have it now that im almost to 400lbs on the military press.
your never going to look like the other guy in the gymn or the guy in the magazine. your going to look like you, only bigger. but youll havbe a much better chance to get bigger if you accept your own genetics, and seek to improve YOUR OWN body... within its abilities and limitations, instead of banging your head against the wall trying to break free of what you were born with.
freddy wanted me to post this, so i will i suppose. ive had a few injuries over the years, ill post as time allows what they were and how i recovered from them. i guess ill start with the first and probably the worst.
i got shot at close range in the stomach when i was a freshman in high school during a family disagreement. bullet basically exploded on impact, had a couple of holes in my aeorta, 30+ holes in both large and small intestine, liver damage, spleen damage, and other things. a fragment of the bullet also nicked my spinal cord and became lodged in my spinal column and was not able to be surgically removed.
becasue of the spinal cord damage, i was left with numbness in my left leg, mostly the lower leg and the buttocks. also the neural innervation to one head of my hamstring muscle was destroyed, allowing 1/3 of my left hamstring to basically whither away and never return. the innervation to the lower leg muscles which pronate and flex the ankle were also affected, though not as much... but they still dont work completely right.
i got home from the hospital after a few weeks on my back, and spent my meager savings on a home exercise machine, the cheap kind id laugh at someone else if they bought. my first week home from the hospital i busted out half the staples in my stomach straining on the machine bench press... i should mention that i was at this point weighing about 110lbs and probably using all ov about 50lbs of resistance. because of high medical bills already and no prospect of an extra trip to the doctor (we had no insurance) i used duct tape to tape my stomach together. this has always been a problem because of course my abdominal muscles had been cut through in the surgery, and the busted staples allowed them to seperate back apart, and i couldnt properly get them back together with tape. i still have a 2 inch seperateion from my sternum to my dick in my abs, right down the middle from this. it is widest right above the belly button.
anyway, i trained twice a day on the home machine, and was using the stack for all the exericses in the little manual that came with it in a few weeks. not much of a feet, it wasnt much weight.
i had a setback a bit after that, i was due to go back to the hospital and have the rest of the staples taken out, and i was beaten up by a family member, and punched in the side pretty hard. the doctor had originally said that the bullet fragment that had nicked my spinal column was still in contact with it, and i should not do anything that could cause it to shift for several months, after which time he though my body would build upp a bit of scar tissue around it and it would be fine. well apparently the punch caused it to shift, and put it in a place where it irritated something... ever since then i have had a small, burning pain in the small of my back where the fragment is. this pain has been with me for 16 years now, it never gets better or worse, its just like someone is sticking a hot pin in my back, 24/7, 365 days a year. long ago i learned to ignore it, its just a fact of life i cannot change.
anyway, i trained in the house with a vengance, just to get to the point where i could walk again. i didnt want to go back to school till i could walk. i acccomplished this and was able to go back to school and makeup my work and pass my classes. but i walked with a limp and ran with a definate limp. this fact really pissed me off, i had never been interested in running before, but i was mad that now i basically couldnt. i read a lot about strength stuff, and became convinced that doing squats would help the muscles in my bad leg enough that i would be able to run properly.
i ahd no money, but i found a couple of large posts, and used a fence hole digger to dig holes and put the posts in the ground to use for squat stands. my grandfather got me a long piece of metal that passed for a bar, and with some cheap concrete weights, i started squatting. at this point i was very enthusiastic about it and squatted in the morning and at night, pretty much every day. out in the back of the barn, in the dirt, with all my concrete weights and sore legs. i used nails in the fence posts to set the bar on, which worked fine since i was sqsuatting with at most 100lbs. it worked well enough that i got to the point where i could run with only a slight limp, and i began to run every day. i basically wanted to prove i could do it, so the next year, my sophmore year i joined the cross country team, and ran in training for cross country a 5 minute and 19 second mile, and an 11 minute and 20 second 2 mile. i never got to compete becasue i was not good enough, but i proved to myself that i could in fact run, although my foot made a weird flopping noise with every step because of the bad muscles in my lower leg not allowing me to lower my toe on each stride properly. i do in fact still have a very slight limp when i run, not much, but its still there.
i went on to be a pretty good high school athlete, captain of the wrestling team both junior and senior year, and ranked number one in the state in wrestling most of my senior year. a seperated shoulder in the state tournament my senior year prevented a state title, but i did wrestle and beat two national champions while in high school, and was ranked nationaly by USA today in prep wrestling, and pretty heavily recruited for college wrestling.
i sometimes wonder if i would have been as good of a high school athlete without the injury. i actually dont think so. it pissed me off so much to not be able to do things, it kind of lit a fire in me. im not glad it happened, hell its hampered me a bit in everything ive done. try setting up for an 800lb squat when you cant flex your left ankle, or try jumping backwards under a 375lb snatch with the same condition, it is a bitch, but its doable if you really want to. but the fact is, i think thats the thing that really set me on the path towards trying to excell as an athlete... if it would have been easy i dont think id have done it, as weird as that may sound.
and almost dieing gives you a certain perspective, even when you are stupid and 15 years old. kind of makes you want to do something, and not just slide through life. every medical person who came in contact with me during the initial few hours told me they couldnt believe i lived, said they had never seen anyone live with an injury like that. so it kind of woke me up a bit.
one other positive aspect was that it taught me to rely on myself. at a young age i was basically almost killed by the people a person is supposed to be able to trust. this has stuck with me throughout life. since this incident, ive been pretty much a self motivated person, and learned to value myself and my accomplishments by my own standards, which i think is a valuable and good thing. i think my personality would have been a lot different had this not happened, and i like the way i am now so in a way im glad things happened the way they did
i guess freddys desire in my posting this was something to do with thing s not being as bad as they initially seem and overcoming problems and all that, not sure itll have the intended effect, but if anyone wants to hear more ive got plenty.
as most of you know, i train athletes and not bodybuilders, so often the methods i use are geared mostly towards strength with little regard to gaining size, or even geared specifically toward gaining strength WITHOUT any size gain for athletes in specific weight classes.
that having been said, i usually ahve a hard time keeping weight off the guys, the volume of training we do often means that the guys must watch the diet really close to avoid growing out of their proper weight class.
now, having said all that, there are times when i have a guy that needs to move up a weight class quickly, for instance i recently had a guy that needed to move from the 77kilo weight class to the 85kilo (or from 169lbs to 187lbs) weight class becasue in his particular divisiion the competition was actually easier at 85.
this partic8lar guy usually trains about 10-12lbs overweight, so i actually ahd to move him from 180lbs to about 200lbs in 8 weeks, hopefully with no bodyfat increase, and of course with no drugs. i thought id share one of the ways i have acomplished this quick weight gain in the past and how i did it in this case. in case you wondered, he did acomplish this, weighed 201lbs 2 weeks before competition, and is now cutting for competition, hes weighing 195 now one week out, most of the rest well sweat off the day of weighin.
the best way to accomplish wwight gain is with of course more food and increased training volume, but i run into a problem here becausxe my guys are squatting hard 3 days a week already, and doing maximal lifts in heavy leg and back exercises like the snatch and clean and jerk 6 days a week already... so adding volume in the conventional way would quickly result in an athlete breaking down.
so i use an idea that didnt start with westside, but has been recently popularized by them, concentric only exercise. the good thing about this is that it seems to have a good effect on the body, but doesnt really make you sore, and doesnt seem to effect recovery that much, in some athletes it seems to even help it.
the way i structure the workouts is this, the regular trainiing around noon, and the extra workouts around 6 or 7 pm. typical exercises are as follows.
walking up stairs with weight, taking the elevator down. for this i have a long, thin bag filled with sand, actually several of them. an athlete takes a bag, say a 50lb bag, and walkes up 2 flights of stairs, then walks to the elevator and rides it back down.
heavy ball throws. i have various bags and balls weighing between 20 and 100lbs. the athlete gets his arms around one on the ground, then with a clean or snatch type motion throws it up and behing them. it hits the ground, they turn around and throw it back. we usually do 10 throws at a time.
various sled pulling. this is pure westside, they have come up with many variations of this. a couple that we use are simply to attach a rope from the sled to the waist, usually around a weight belt, and walk 40 or 50 yards taking long, straight legged strides. for the upper body, we use two ropes, each with a handle, and for instance do a bench press type motion to pull the sled forward, then walk a step, then press again, etc. or turn around and do the same thing with a row motion. we also put the rope between our legs, and face away from the sled... as you take a step, straighten the body slightly, this pulls the sled forward. take another step to take the slack out, then do it again.
all of these things work the major muscle groups with concentric only action... adding to the workload but not compromising recovery ability that much, as long as you get extra sleep and remember to take in more food at least. using these sorts of methods seems to allow athletes to handle more workload than they could with only normal exercises, but its important i think to time the workouts right. you want to do these "extra" workouts 4-6 hours after your normal workouts if possible. i know others who have done their regular workouts in the evenings, and gotten up and done these extra workouts in the mornings and had good results, but i havent tried that much.
i am not really sure how these types of things would work for bodybuilders... however i have to think that they would in fact work... i mean one of the reasons i dont use them more in regular training is that it tends to make it too hard to keep a guys weight down. they seem to be particularly effective for adding mass to the hamstrings, calves, glutes, and the spinal erectors and also upper back.
one other thing, we alter the weight we use for each day much like westside does... in other words, if you do it 3 days in a row, the second day you use half the weight you used on the first day, the third day half of whay you used on the second day, and then you start over again with 100% weight. if any of you bodybuilders out there thinks about trying this, id be interested to hear how it worked for you.
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Training while on AAS 
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