Why Body Building Sucks

Many people think I despise body building training, and its vast number of proponents, because its methodologies don’t coincide with what I preach. This is partially true, but only to a certain extent: I do have some issues with isolating body parts from a bio-mechanical sense, but the reality is I have a huge amount of respect for body builders. The level of dedication, commitment, and effort they have to exhibit every single day to both their training and their nutritional habits is very admirable. But to a certain degree, this is also where my problem lies:

People who attain physical improvements by training like a body builder fall into at least 3 of the 4 following categories:

· They have tons of time
· They have tons of money
· They are young
· They are taking something illegal

Go ahead: Name me someone who gets results training like a body builder who doesn’t fall into at least three of those four categories.

The reason bodybuilding sucks, and the real reason I mock it, is because 99% of people who train like bodybuilders WILL NOT get results. They will complain of back, shoulder and knee pain, or they are still overweight and/or look like they walk on their knuckles from their posture being so ridiculously bad.

The alarmingly low percentage of people who do train like bodybuilders and get good results, fall into at least three of the four categories I mentioned above.

Think about it: How much time does it take to train every single muscle group in your body individually (you know, “doing abs” then “doing back” then “doing bi’s” etc.)? Hours upon hours per week, and then some…there are hundreds of muscles in the body for crying out loud.

Generally, people who have hours upon hours per week either have someone who pays the bills for them, or have enough discretionary income that they can make their training a priority over their work rather than the other way around without financial harm being done.

Young people (18-25) by definition can do more than older people and have an infinitely lower chance of being injured while exercising. Combine that with someone else paying your rent for you, and a job (maybe) that you aren’t going to have in 6 months anyway so who cares about it, and you have a perfect recipe for training like a moron and still getting results. (On a side note, this is why I smirk at 40 somethings who still train like this but can’t figure out why they’re fat and their backs hurt – “seriously, I played high school football 25 years ago, I know how to lift.” Bawhawhawhaw!!!)

Or illegal performance enhancing drugs are used, which as someone who worked in commercial gyms for about 8 years, I can tell you are far more common than you may realize.

I’m not even going to get into the unbelievably high tolerance for boredom you need to train in this manner. My GOD there are only so many ways to flex and extend your elbow and knee – how can you possibly stand doing the same three exercises every…single…day…uuugghhh…

Now you can see more clearly perhaps why I think bodybuilding is a ridiculous choice of training methodology for 99.9% of us. The overwhelming majority of people I know don’t have 10 or more hours per week to exercise, do not have excessive discretionary income, are not 20 years old and don’t use drugs.

For those of us who aren’t young, rich and bored with all our free time, we need to come up with alternatives. We need to get results in a few hours per week, without risking our health, without bankrupting ourselves, and have fun doing it. I know, that’s not an easy task – luckily, you know me.

Send your hate mail to thetrainingrim@gmail.com.