Sep 13, 2012

Bodybuilding dimension - the drug problem

    Much of the mainstream of the training world, and the bodybuilding dimension in particular, plays down the drug problem, or pretty much pretends it doesn’t exist, and does nothing of substance to help put an end to drug abuse.
    That much of the establishment panders to the drug abusers, glorifies many of them, has made a few of them into icons, and presents them as role models, has played a major part in encouraging drug abuse and the accompanying chaos.
    The drug problem in the bodybuilding world in particular is bad beyond belief. This has brought great ignominy upon mainstream bodybuilding.
   But there’s another side to bodybuilding, and strength training in general. It has nothing to do with the drug abusers or their lackeys, or with bull, lies, fraud, or impractical and useless training routines. After pointing out what’s fundamentally wrong and squalid about the training world, this book will show you the other side of the coin—the clean, honest, truthful, productive, practical, healthy and life-enhancing side.
  
   Anyone, anywhere or anything that promotes training routines that only work well for the genetically gifted and/or drug enhanced, or offers how-to information on drug abuse (or carries ads for books on the same), or promotes absurd expectations and role models, or teaches high-risk or impractical training practices, or is a food supplement catalog in disguise, simply does not have your best interests at heart. If you follow the “instruction” found there you’re going to tread the same path of frustration and even despair that millions already have.

List of conventional training methods

Consider some of what conventional training methods promote, and see how it’s a travesty of useful instruction:
1. Conventional training methods overtrain everyone other than the genetically gifted and drug abusers, but
overtraining will not help you.
2. Conventional training methods promote some high-risk exercises that injure many people. Getting injured will not help you build the physique you want.
3. Conventional training methods often promote specific dangerous techniques for otherwise good exercises, and those specific techniques injure many people. Again, getting injured will not help build a good physique.
4. Conventional training methods promote a volume and frequency that are impractical for busy working and
family people. But even sacrificing work, family, education and a balanced life won’t make conventional
training methods work for typical people, so there’s no value in extreme measures anyway.
5. Conventional training methods place exaggerated importance on food supplements. Food supplements
can’t make lousy training programs work.
6. Conventional training methods promote exaggerated expectations, and invariably use drug-fed genetic freaks as gurus and role models, neither of which will help you to realize your potential.
7. Conventional training methods complicate training, and confuse people. Complication and confusion can’t help.
8. Conventional training methods are not personalized to meet individual needs, limitations, lifestyles and goals.
This produces overtraining, injuries, frustration and giving up—i.e., failure.
9. Conventional training methods actually encourage drug abuse, because without the drug assistance those
methods just don’t work for most people.

What is conventional bodybuilding?

Conventional bodybuilding methods are largely the training practices of elite male and female bodybuilders and strength athletes—practices which are vigorously promoted in most bodybuilding magazines and books, and even on television too. They involve weight training on 4–6 days per week, multiple exercises per muscle group, and usually at least three work sets per exercise (in addition to warmup work).

Conventional bodybuilding methods aren’t just what any specific magazine, book or publisher has to say. It’s a collective thing arising from many authors, publishers, books, magazines, organizations and gyms. It’s the
whole shebang of excessive and impractical routines, and the presentation of the competitive elite as gurus and role models.