Reading over these last few posts, I think it really emphasize the need for a no-nonsense approach to strengthening and conditioning. I see a lot of guys who started off in the gym with an issue of Men's Health or Flex or whatever bodybuilding bullshit is out on the market, they play around, talk about listening to their body. Unfortunately, people either see no results (and give up), get beat up from not knowing about form or programming, or they get swole as shit, aka the genetic freaks.
I've seen dudes (a lot of them black for some reason) doing the stupidest shit in the gym, like 5x5 squats 3 times a week or high-rep deadlifts done to failure, and they look omega jacked. What happens then is these guys, having duked it out in the trenches, tell their tale like a template. This usually leads to things like "Squats are bad for your knees" "don't eat any carbs" "switch it up!" Switch it up is usually spouted when someone has trained themselves into the ground or can't lift a proper way and so switching to a different form of the exercise all of a sudden relieves the pain. For example, I saw a dude benching the lower 300s with half ROM with a wide grip that didn't produce vertical foreams at the bottom of his bench. I asked why he cut the movement so short, and sure enough ,it was due to him nursing a wrist injury, most likely produced by the lever arm that his forearm angle created.
Why am I posting this diatribe? Well, it gets very frustrating when I read on the internet and deal with it in real life about the various misinformation regarding exercise and nutrition. Eating carbs past 7pm will fuck you up forever. Deadlifting will destroy your spin. Yoga will make you lean and toned unlike those awful weights that make you beeg and bolky. It seems like much of the misinformation is built upon fear, and the idea that your body immediately and drastically reacts to any dietary or exercise changes you make, like your metabolism shutting down if you don't eat breakfast.
I like Szu's story because it shows what happens when you listen to the magazines and the big guys in the gym. He's made a lot of progress but could have avoided a lot of headaches had someone with a straight head been able to lay out the basics. Right now, I'm reading an issue of Men's Health and it's suggesting you shed fat and build music by doing 4 randomly assorted bodyweight exercises in a quick circuit. They talk about lean and jacked by eating like a bird. One article, in particular, says if you walk around all day while hungry and eat one big meal, then you're basically in starvation body and your body is going to store all of it as fat. Don't tell that to Mark Berham of Leangains, or anyone doing the Warrior Diet, or me who does LG and a modified protein sparing diet who shouldn't be losing weight at all. The article implies that bodies respond like a bear's does hibernation, that our RMR shoots waaaay down if you don't eat all day, and then you need to "burn off" your food before the night time because apparently your body does fuck all, in terms of metabolic activity, during the waking hours before your bedtime meal.
