Living Large. Vince Del Monte
not waste any energy arguing or trying to convince. The results show soon enough. Let your muscular body do the talking. When naysayers see the change in you, they will either shut up or tell everyone they always knew you could do it.
Bodybuilding Magazines—Why I Tossed Mine in the Garbage
Fashion magazines exist to sell clothes and makeup. Advertisers hire gorgeous models, airbrush the photos so they look flawless, and then use the perfected images to sell their wares. Bodybuilding magazines are similar in that they exist to sell supplements. Advertisers use photographs of shredded models with huge muscles, and every month they tell you that your dream body is locked up inside some liquid, powder, or pill.
Don’t buy it. Aside from the very few exceptions that I’ll share with you, every new supplement is made with the same crap that the last supplement had. If a bodybuilding magazine spent all two hundred pages of one issue teaching you how to properly eat and weight train, then you wouldn’t have the desire to buy any supplements. Supplement sellers would stop buying ad space, and the magazine would be out of business.
And that’s just what it is—a business. While they inspire millions, bodybuilding magazines also mislead millions. They aren’t going to tell you the truth—that drugs combined with exceptional genetics are responsible for these guys’ massive size. Just like the fashion model will say, “It’s the mascara,” the featured hulks will claim their results came from supplements because they’re being paid to promote them.
Most of the routines recommended in these magazines would kill an adult gorilla. The workouts involve so much volume, even if you can do them for a while, it’s not sustainable. It’s like asking a beginning runner to sprint a marathon, five times a week. If you’re not taking steroids, the advice in these articles will cause overtraining, injuries, or illness, and lots of wasted time, and you should avoid them.
Personal Trainers Who Are More About Sales Than Size
You shouldn’t pump iron without expert guidance, but finding a good trainer can be a real challenge. In the fitness world, it’s pretty easy to become an “overnight expert’’—take your shirt off, show your abs, start a YouTube channel, and you’re in business. It’s one thing to change your own physique, but helping others requires another skill-set. The best trainers have one aim—and it’s not to cause you the most pain, make you sore, or chew your ear off and waste your time. It is to get you to your goal optimally and safely with nonstop progress.
As of this writing, no state agency sets standards for, regulates, or monitors personal trainers. Some trainers get “certified” by just taking a written test online, but even a degree in exercise physiology does not mean the trainer knows how to help you gain size. Most teach exercise and give nutrition advice designed to help the general public improve overall fitness. They do not deliver specialized knowledge on how to gain massive amounts of muscle.
Working for a gym or having years of experience doesn’t guarantee your trainer knows what he’s doing either. Most gyms survive not on memberships but by selling personal training packages, and a lot of them hire novice trainers to do it. If you go to your local big-box gym and look, you’re more likely to meet a great salesperson than a kick-ass trainer.
Know what to look for and which questions to ask. Do a demo session or two. Ask about the last certification or seminar they invested in. Ask who mentors them. Make sure the trainer has his or her own coach and stays up-to-date on the latest science. I instantly disqualify potential trainers who don’t have their own coach. It sounds harsh, but this one rule will help you rule out average trainers.
Only keep a trainer who comes to the session with the attitude that for every minute that he’s not delivering value, that’s a dollar back to you. If they show up 15 minutes late, that should be a $15 discount on the session. If they’re rambling about nothing for 10 minutes, that’s $10 off!
Look for someone with a solid track record who has helped others achieve the results you want. Ask to see their success stories. Look at or talk to their other clients. If your prospective mentor doesn’t have a track record of success helping people achieve goals identical to yours, then you’ve dodged a bullet. Move on.
“Superhumans” and the Juiced-Up Bodybuilder
Eight-time Mr. Olympia champion Jay Cutler bench-pressed 315 pounds the first time he lifted weights.1 Rumor has it that Arnold ripped out his own umbilical cord. Some people were born to develop massive size and strength. If at age sixteen you looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was sixteen, you wouldn’t need this book to gain size. The genetically gifted can lift more. They don’t get as sore. They recover faster. So, yeah, they have an unfair advantage.
For you to try to follow their regimen to get their results is ridiculous. It’s like a poor man taking wealth-building advice from a guy who inherited a fortune. Even though he has the money, he doesn’t know how to go from broke to wealthy. His methods don’t apply.
The juiced-up bodybuilder is also your enemy, and if he’s lying about taking steroids, it’s worse. When you follow the advice of these “fake naturals” or “fake nattys” and fail to get great results, it can strip you of your motivation. Problem is, almost everyone who takes steroids hides it, making you believe it’s the “hard training,” “clean diet,” and “new breakthrough program” that forced that muscle growth. “B.S.,” I say. If a fitness guru is taking steroids, he should at least be honest about it so people can see the whole picture.
The next time you find yourself sitting on the couch late at night watching an infomercial for fitness equipment or a quick-fix nutritional product, drop and give me 20 pushups—one-handed—while repeating, “I’m not a sucker . . . I’m not a sucker . . . “ That ought to wake you up out of your stupor before you get your credit card and buy a $1,000 coatrack. Whether or not it’s you, I bet you know someone with a massive “fitness” contraption that has become the world’s most expensive clothesline, because thousands of people buy this crap.
A good sign of how well a product is selling is how long the ads run.2 No advertiser would keep running an ad unless it sold a lot of product. Good marketing can get people to buy all kinds of things, but let’s face it, if you think any fitness model built his body using a vibrating dumbbell, you’re dreaming. These guys got buff with hours in the gym and hard work, so keep your ass off the couch and your hand off the remote. You can build mega muscle mass without spending a ton of money on equipment or supplements. If you have some money to put into this quest, spend it on high-quality food, a decent gym membership, and a solid coach.
How to Lose the Top Five B.S. Excuses for Not Gaining Muscle
So many people ask me how to build muscle, and I tell them—I belong to a gym, eat healthy, stay consistent, educate myself, and take a few select supplements. Next they unload an earful of excuses, excuses, excuses. I am so sick and tired of hearing excuses! I have zero sympathy for people who make excuses. All it means is they haven’t taken responsibility for their lives.
Your life today is the result of choices you made before. You can take responsibility for everything you have in life, or you can choose to blame others and outside forces. I have found that the results you achieve in and out of the gym rarely exceed your willingness to stop making excuses and start taking personal responsibility for everything you