I've been dwelling on what one of the newbs here was saying....
"What is the point of lifting if you don't do it on steroids?"
It's been eating at me a bit.
One of the thoughts I've been having recently is if I knew then what I know now.........
So bear with me a little bit, my younger mates, and let's see what Ol' Roman had to work with back when I was younger, and then contrast that with now.
I started lifting in the very early 70's.
Back then, knowledge of Body Building nutrition was scant.
I/We didn't understand/appreciate the true significance of eating the right amount of protein. And eating the right amount of calories.
There was no internet. There were no personal computers. Hell, we barely had electronic calculators. In 1970 I was still using a slide rule. (Don't bother asking if you don't know). So there were only two real sources of information. Books (Library/Book Store at the mall), or Bro Science. But there really wasn't much out there in the way of books.
I/We didn't have access to food supplementation.
There was no creatine.
There was no protein powder.
There were no BCAA's
I somehow came on a magazine one time, and in the back, I saw an ad for a health nutrition store. I wrote them and they sent me a catalog. I somehow knew I needed more protein in my diet. But how much? I had no idea. So I ordered these protein tablets. Something like five (5) pounds. And it cost a lot! When I read the label, it said I needed to take 5x 1mg tablets every day to become more muscular. So, 5 grams a day of protein powder it was. We also had liquid (predigested) protein, that was like $20 for 16oz. Nasty/Bitter tasting stuff. But I was still in highschool, and that was a lot of money back then.
We didn't have all the vitamins back then either. I was taking "prenatal" vitamins, and thought I was really doing the right thing.
We didn't have all the fancy gym equipment back then. In our town in the bay area, there was probably one, maybe two gyms. Hardcore, and they didn't fvck around with newbs like me. So I had to use my old man's Ted Williams weight set he got for Christmas one year, made of concrete and plastic. Had maybe 120 pounds, one bar, two dumb bells, and that was pretty much it.
I worked out for five years on that crappy weight set. I went to the book store and bought a couple of books to help me learn. But no videos, just drawings, so did I have good form? Probably not.
By the time I joined the military, I was 17, and that was 1979.
Back then, the Army did not have a gym. If we wanted to work out, we made the equipment ourselves. we used steel poles, and buckets filled with concrete. This is our barbells. Plus the gold standard, pushups/situps/running. I could do so many godawm pushups we started putting cinder blocks on our shoulder blades to add weight. I got up to 60 or 70 cinderblock pushups before they shipped me off to Germany. I won a $20 bet in basic I could do 500 situps in something like 15 minutes. I looked at the guy after I won, and asked "double or nothing". He declined. he said he was too tired holding my feet.
When I got out of the army in 85, I began using my father's damn Ted Williams weight set again. But I was able to add more to it, with additional equipment. I had to cut the barbell in half, so I could hold enough of the concrete weights so I can do one arm curls. I soon realized that some of the big guys were eating some tablets called Abombs. And yes, they got big. I refrained, as something didn't seem right. My dad was always preaching the evils of steroids, which was probably a contributing factor in my abstaining.
My point in this rather long and windy oratory is to point out the hardship us old timers had to go through to pursue their passion. By the time the late 80's rolled around, gyms were becoming fashionable, and things got a lot easier.
And every day I come here, and newb after newb feels the only way they can workout is by taking drugs. They go to these fancy gyms, drink all these fancy potions and elixers, and want to take drugs instead of doing the hard work to make progress.
Back in my day, you had to EARN your physique.
Nowadays, physiques are more of a commodity, something to be purchased. We have everything necessary, less the equipment and the food, to build a solid physique. All the information anyone could ever want. I would have killed for this information 40 years ago.....
....but for some, it's not appreciated. They want a physique that would ordinarily take five years or longer to build, and they want it in 90 days so they can look good at the beach.
Maybe my days are numbers, and it's time for an old bull like me to step aside for this drive through window society we have nowadays. Maybe the days of hard work and sweat in the gym are passé, and instead we should really just be focused on only taking steroids?
I don't know, isn't that the general attitude of our younger generation?
---Roman