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Hi, my name is Ron. I am not, nor am I professing to be, an expert in body building, weight training or nutrition. I have written this page because I have learned a lot from reading and made a lot of mistakes in my pursuit of a nice body. I want to help fellow travelers on this same journey to avoid some of the pitfalls I have experienced and have seen others experienced.
Let me tell you how I got into body building. It started two and one half years ago. I was 80 or so pounds overweight, had high cholesterol, high blood pressure, arthritis, and no energy. I decided that I did not want to die the way I was seeing some young friends die. I had gone to 4 funerals in the past year of people in their early to mid 50's. Others were having by-pass surgery and heart trouble in their 40's.
With this in mind, I went to the grocery store one day and on the back of the receipt was an offer for a free month membership at the gym right across the street. My wife insisted that we go and check it out. We did and we signed up for a two year membership. I started on the treadmill and began changing my eating habits and in four months I had lost fifty pounds. My blood pressure dropped from 155 over 105 to 117 over 74 and has remained there for over two years now. My cholesterol dropped from over 300 to a low of 147. I lost a total of 65 pounds and felt and looked great.
During this time I was working with weights, just to lose weight, and noticed my body starting to respond. My knee that had arithist so bad was beginning not to hurt and my shoulder that had very limited movement was regaining is full course of movement. So I made a decision that was life changing. I began to workout, not to just get rid of fat, but to build muscle and see how good I could look.
I am very pleased with the progress that I have made and disappointed at the same time that it hasn't been better (I don't know of anyone who is totally satisfied with their progress). Now for some of the things that I have learned during these past 2 ½ years.
First of all and here is my philosophy, body building is a life time commitment. It is not about just looking good, but about being healthy. I say that because so many in the body building world today do things to their bodies that is totally against good health in the pursuit of getting bigger and looking better.
I have seen around a thousand people join the gym with high expectations only to stop coming within a month or two. There is no quick fix to a lifetime of body abuse, but there is hope. Just like there are no real get rich quick plans out there, there are no real get big and strong plans out there either. One of the biggest downfalls for amateur body builders is muscle magazines. We buy them and look at guys that weight 275, 290, and even 325 pounds with body fat content of 2 ½ to 5% and we start wanting to be like that.
I want you to know that it is totally impossible to make those kinds of gains without taking steroids. I don't care how much you eat, how much you rest or how much you workout, you will not make those gains without committing a felony and committing a crime against your body. Remember, good health should be your number one goal in body building.
Secondly, a pitfall many beginners fall into is that they read the workout schedules of the drug using pros and try to emulate them. You must work your body not someone else's. Steroids make it possible to recover quickly and workout again. As a natural body builder (drug free) you can only work your body so hard and make gains. If you workout too much it becomes counterproductive and you can actually see a loss of strength and muscle.
So let me sum all this up. Use common sense when beginning your program. Use the weight that your body can handle, not what your buddy is doing or what a guy or girl your size ought to be able to do. Make a life time commitment to health and looking good. And start on a journey that is fun, personally challenging and rewards you with a nice body.
Good luck. I could have written much more but I know that you are going to make some of the same mistakes that everyone else does anyway, but I tried.
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