Dear reader, here is an excerpt from a chapter of my book in which I write a letter to myself and send it back in time. I wrote this letter this year and sent it to my 15-year-old self, Janar, in 1995.
This is a short excerpt from a much longer letter…
Hello Janar…
First, I owe you an apology for taking so long to write. Seventeen years have passed since nineteen ninety-five, and that is a long time. So much has happened and changed in my life since then. I am writing because I have actually been watching you from the sidelines for a long time. I will already be 33 this autumn; you are 15 and will only turn 16 in the autumn. Although you first tried working out in 1993, I did not start writing to you straight away. I thought I would give you a couple of years and see which direction you took. But over those couple of years, your approach to training has not improved at all. I know and can see what you do, what you are like and where you are trying to go. Let me be blunt: you have a great deal to learn. You have got so many things so wrong. I finally made myself sit down and write because I want to help you. I can tell you, Janar, that you are in for a great deal of disappointment, and you will have to rethink many of your beliefs and assumptions. Do not take offense, but you know next to nothing about this, and you are doing a great many things very badly.
Please take this to heart. Stop agonizing over where to put forearm, calf or rhomboid exercises in your training program. Honestly, you will lose nothing by leaving exercises for these muscles out of your program altogether for now, during your first four to five years of training. On the contrary, you will only benefit, with more room to focus on compound exercises and increasing the weights you lift. You do not need to focus on lots of isolation exercises. Put more emphasis on compound exercises; in fact, those are all you need to do.
Put together a sound training program and, as I said, do not worry about training for fine detail. Try to understand that in your first years of training, compound exercises provide one hundred percent of what you need to progress. If you stick with this sport and become a competitive bodybuilder, you can work on the details later.
If at all possible, please start taking your back and leg training more seriously. You need to understand that these are the areas that make a bodybuilder a bodybuilder. Big pecs and a prominent vein on your biceps alone will not beat anyone on stage. Learn to love squats and adore pull-ups. Believe me, judged by bodybuilding’s aesthetic standards and criteria, your back and legs are your weak points. But I also know that if you work hard and make these body parts a priority, you can turn yourself into a very competitive bodybuilder.
I know Arnold is your great idol, but you cannot base your training programs on his. You do not have his genetics, the means to eat the way he does or the training opportunities he has.
Your attempts to do your “thing” at home are admirable, but I strongly recommend finding the time and a way to train at the school gym. Admittedly, I know the facilities there are limited too; as far as I know, there is not a single pair of dumbbells. At least there is a reasonably decent barbell with weights and a few exercise machines.
Read and gather as much information as you possibly can. I mean literature on training in particular. Learn to distinguish what matters from what does not. As one great and very holy book says: “Buy truth and do not sell it; acquire wisdom and understanding.” Understand that wisdom today is not simply information or having access to it. Wisdom is the ability to piece together the information you have and draw the right conclusion. Identify your strengths and weaknesses. Focus on your weaknesses instead of endlessly working the muscles that are already well developed. Set your goals. Start thinking about who you really are. Are you a bodybuilder, or do you just do a little strength training for fun? Get clear on what bodybuilding actually is and what the sport involves. Do you ever want to compete in bodybuilding???
Gaining strength is closely linked to muscle growth, but the two do not always go hand in hand. Do not try to be a powerlifter and a bodybuilder at the same time. I know this will be a major problem for you in the future. If you intend to focus more on bodybuilding, much of your training needs to be geared toward building muscle mass and improving your proportions. With your level of experience, simply trying to get stronger at compound exercises is enough to begin with, of course. As you progress, though, you will realize that training purely to increase your strength is not enough. It is certainly important to keep getting stronger, but do not let it become an all-consuming obsession. Build your strength while staying aware of your weaknesses and keeping an eye on your proportions.
Now that I am approaching the ripe age of middle age, I can tell you that much of what holds us back from achieving our goals and ambitions is our inability to make connections. We tend to be driven by whatever promises an immediate, direct benefit. That is partly a good quality, of course, and partly a bad one. This applies to everything, and sport, training and your own approach are no exceptions. Let me give you just a few examples. In the gym, people only want to train the muscles they can see in the mirror. Or nobody can be bothered to stretch because, of course, there is no direct benefit. We seem to understand the importance of activities like these, whose necessity and benefits are less direct, yet we stubbornly keep ignoring them. Janar, understand that spending more time in the gym and doing more sets is not what makes you stronger and bigger.
Even now, I still find that most people who train in the gym place greater importance on training and its contribution to the final result. It seems to be what moves us forward directly. The importance of nutrition is generally known, but many people still fail to fully appreciate it.
Many people who train fall into the trap of focusing only on the process itself (the individual workout and the immediate pump) and enjoying it, rather than on the consequences or results that emerge over time. Again, you could find hundreds of examples of this in everyday life. We stopped eating simply to function normally and survive a long time ago. For the past 20 – 30 years, we have been living to eat rather than eating to live. This is not true of every society, but it applies one hundred percent in Europe and America. We eat and enjoy the process of eating, without really understanding what we sacrifice for that pleasure. When the beer tastes good and the chocolate melts in your mouth every evening, nobody thinks about the consequences two, six or fifteen years down the line. Sex has long since ceased to be merely a means of having children. Of course, people have always had sex for pleasure, but however you look at it, its original purpose is something quite different. It also seems that enjoyment of sex as a process is reaching its peak in the present era. Or take drinking alcohol. When the party is in full swing, shot glasses are being filled and one mug of beer follows another, nobody gives much thought to the next day. Still less is anyone likely to think about the long-term negative effects of a lifestyle built around regular drinking.
The same applies to training, particularly strength training, and especially bodybuilding training. The focus is on one tiny “puzzle piece”, rather than on shaping and creating the bigger picture as a whole. Unfortunately, you are following the same path at the moment. You focus on individual workouts, chase a muscle pump and surrender to the feeling, rather than focusing on the cumulative effect of those regular workouts. Nine times out of ten, this is a mistake: the process itself should come second, and the long-term consequences should come first. I know this, and probably a great many people who train, both knowledgeable and less knowledgeable, know it too. Yet we keep making the same mistake. We give ourselves over to the process above all else. Why!!! I don’t know!!!
So you need to start understanding that, in sport, including bodybuilding, spending more time in the gym and always pushing every set to failure is not what gets you further. What you do in the gym alone will be far from the main factor determining your success. I know that right now you think “the more, the better”. Understand that this approach will not get you far. You need to train hard and put in the effort, but you also need to train intelligently and think things through.
I know that “Atleet” magazine is currently your only source of reading material on how to train and put together training programs, but let me tell you one thing: don’t try to follow American professional bodybuilders’ training programs to the letter. Following someone else’s program will not make you look like the person who uses it.
There is something else you need to understand: you need to make your training consistent. Doing something for 3 months, then taking a month or a month and a half off, simply does not work.
If you want to succeed in your training, learn the anatomy of the major muscle groups. Seated behind-the-neck presses and seated behind-the-neck lat pulldowns are not the same exercise and do not work the same muscle groups.
Remember, what you do in the gym will only translate into results if your nutrition and recovery are in order. Start eating cottage cheese and quark: they cost next to nothing where you are at the moment. You definitely need to add protein to your diet. I know you think protein powders are some kind of miracle product. They aren’t. If you eat a balanced diet, you can get enough protein from food, and being unable to use protein powder as a supplement will not hold back your progress.
Yours sincerely, Janar, writing from 2012…
Author: Janar Rückenberg
Come and train! ArtGym
