Bike Glossy
Bike Glossy
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The mainstream bodybuilding magazines (I'll call them "glossies" for convenience from now on) are responsible for most of you bodybuilders who are making slow or no progress, treading water in your weight training and even sometimes just giving up through disappointment.
I'm not saying that everything in the glossies is rubbish, but I am saying that the vast majority of it is rubbish. The main reason is that the magazine survives (or doesn't) because of its advertising. They have an ulterior motive behind the advice (for want of a better word) they give, which is to get you to spend cash on expensive supplements that you probably don't need.
I recently bought a mainstream magazine, and out of 200 pages I reckon two thirds of it was adverts.
Here's what you can get from a typical glossy;
1/ Unrealistic expectations
The glossies do articles about top bodybuilders, competition winners who are often loaded to the eyeballs with steroids. The thing about elite bodybuilders is that they now are obliged to take drugs if they want to succeed, in order to keep up with everyone else.
In addition to this, they are usually genetically gifted, maybe in the top 1 per cent, but the magazine implies that if you copy what their routine is, you can have a body like a contest winner in six months.
Sorry to burst that balloon, but even six years is unrealistic here for most of us mortals.
2/ Unrealistic routines
The glossies are mostly to blame for recreational bodybuilders spending more time in the gym than out of it, sometimes training as much as 6 times a week.
If you're training more than three times a week, (I recommend just two) than you can't possibly make any decent muscle gains. A muscle grows when it's resting. You stimulate muscle growth in the gym, recover out of the gym, and that's how you get bigger.
I've seen ludicrous routines in the glossies - years back I remember a Schwarzenegger arm routine where he did about six different arm exercises six times a week! Total madness. For a start, Arnold was genetically elite, and us ordinary weight trainers could not hope to gain in a routine like that.
Secondly, it's likely that the article was ghost written anyway.
3/ Silly Isolation and shaping exercises
The glossies are also to blame for people whiling away hour after hour in the gym doing pointless movements like tricep kickbacks, dumbbell flyes, preacher curls, calf raises on the leg press machine and so on.
The quickest way to get bigger is consistent training on major compound movements like the squat, dead lift, leg press, bench press, chin and so on. You need to hit the major muscle groups like the legs and back to get bigger. This also makes it easier to grow the smaller muscles.
It makes my blood boil when I read about someone who weighs 140lb trying to isolate the outer lateral head of his eleven inch arms. You cannot shape muscles you don't have!
4/ Selling expensive supplements
Most supplements are a waste of time and money. If you take the time to set up a proper diet, you don't need supplements. You can make your own blender bombs by adding skim milk powder to milk, throwing in a banana or a few strawberries and whizzing it all up, and it's a sight cheaper than a commercial protein mix!
5/ Making Bodybuilding sound a lot more complex than it really is
The glossies will have you spending most of your waking hours slaving away in the gym on pointless shaping and toning movements, and chugging down way overpriced bodybuilding "stacks" that are about as much use as an ashtray on a motor bike.
Don't buy into this.
Listen to me - bodybuilding in theory is very simple;
Stick to major compound exercises, rest and eat well, train hard and briefly (no more than 3 hours a week), keep good exercise form and gradually build your weights up, and you can build your dream body.
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