 I’m constantly amazed at the number of people who think they might trip over a Mr. Olympia trophy on their way out the door or stumble over an Olympic gold medal on their way to the bathroom in the morning. We need to face facts, most of us just aren’t as advanced as we think we are.
I see this in a couple of areas. The first is women and weak men that start training and then get worried that they might be “getting big” and they don’t want that. What happens so often is that people are in such terrible, horrible shape when they begin that ANY exercise at all increases their bodies demand for and absorption of protein because their newly started exercise routine causes muscle stress all across the body. This means that a new jogger that previously did absolutely nothing will notice their biceps getting slightly bigger because holding the arms in a semi-flexed position for 30:00 3x a week placed more stress on their biceps than they’d likely ever experienced before. Trainers will notice that these folks make gains on their bench press without benching just because the act of swinging the arms for 30 minutes stimulates some small muscle growth in the chest. When this growth happens, the newbie gets all worried that they’re “getting big.” No, I’m not making this up.
The problem is that folks who don’t exercise have no idea of and no appreciation for just how hard it is to gain a lot of muscle. They’ve been lied to by the infomercials that it can happen overnight so they’re afraid it might happen to them. Trainers that tell folks how to exercise to make their muscle smaller don’t help the issue either. Yes, they exist too, I’m sorry to say.
The other area I see this in is any debate over technique like high-bar vs. low-bar squat or the angle of the hip in the deadlift, etc. When you find out that the people arguing might have a deadlift of 80kg then you really have to wonder about the quality of the info provided in the debate. How about this? You follow your favorite technqiue until you pull some decent weight and then get back to us?
I teach a lot of beginners and I do think there’s such a thing as beginner’s form and let’s say “advanced form.” We should be teaching form and more importantly explaining why we do things a certain way so folks will understand. You can also get away with a lot of things when you’re already strong that beginners can’t get away with. And a lot of people’s form on various exercises (think bench press) is designed for people to “get a pump” and not to get strong — a big problem IMO. But arguing about angles, etc. is minutia compared to doing the actual work one way or the other. Arguing about “what’s best” is best saved for when you’re possibly going to bump into that and that’s a few years down the road for most folks.
Rather than waste time worried that we’ll end up looking like Ms. Olympia or that our technique might hamper our chances at an Olympic medal when we’ve only been lifting for 3 months, perhaps we’d be better off focusing on the basics both in lifting and in nutrition.
But I know — that’s boring, right? 🙂