Is anyone else burnt out on bodybuilding/strength training?

[JVBParticipant]

I understand fully. You are judging non meat eaters on your clear misunderstanding of nutrition.

Peace is > piece.

[MutineerParticipant 1467]

BachelorForLife wrote:

I know some may say you need strength training and such, but I don’t need all that muscle I’ve gained over this past year. It’s just for show. Hell, I don’t even do sports or martial arts. Which is why I think weighing less is the ideal goal if you don’t need muscle for anything such as a job or sports.

Strength training is essential for optimal testosterone. You should consider cutting down not abandoning it completely. You’re also going to mess up your metabolism by eating just 1000-1200 calories a day in the long term.

"The secret to happiness is freedom... And the secret to freedom is courage." - Thucydides

[SolidParticipant 7520]

JVB wrote:

I understand fully. You are judging non meat eaters on your clear misunderstanding of nutrition.

Read it again

[TrailbossParticipant 1844]

I spent a LOT of my 52 years in the gym, wasting time on the concept of “bodybuilding”. Made some decent gains over the years, and at 52 people say I do not look my age at all. What I *should* have been doing is pure strength training. There is, to me, no reason whatsoever to go to the gym for anything else. After a few years of laying off the gym, I got back into it a while back. I rid myself of the dogma, Weider junk science and pretty much all the Madison avenue driven bodybuilding supplements and concepts and went back to science. Long story short: strength comes to muscle fibers the same way a tan comes to the skin. It’s a survival mechanism. The human body has very few manipulable, pre-programmed genetic attributes. One can make their skin darker by exposing it to the high intensity rays of the sun. One can cause the skin on their hands to thicken and callous if they expose it to high intensity effort such as digging holes with a shovel or hiking long distance to thicken the bottoms of the feet. One can similarly expose any given muscle to high intensity effort and the body will respond by making it stronger if the right conditions are met: Minimum effective dose of intense effort, a solid period of time to recover and over-compensate, and eating good food. There is a picture of Mike Mentzer in an earlier post and he was shouting this stuff out back in the 70’s and nobody listened. Arnold and Joe/Ben Weider came up with all their bulls~~~ and muddied up the waters for marketing reasons and people bought their dogma. Me too. Spent countless hours and dollars on their ideas and Anabolic Mega Paks of vitamins and s~~~…never did get that “beach body”. Don’t care about that now, at my age. But…reducing the training to pure strength training is working much better for me now. Believe it or not, my workout for the past few months is this: “Push” saturday, “Pull” sunday and no training at all for the next 5 days. I workout on sat and sun and rest during the week. Strength is going up and people are asking me if I am going to the gym. Something must be working. I believe the workout is not as important as the rest period and the need for a balanced, regular diet. That’s it. To the body, it’s all about survival. The muscles don’t give a s~~~ about your need to attract women or look “alpha” at the beach. The body is just trying to survive. Strength comes to the muscle exactly the same way a tan comes to the skin after you sit out in the sun. The body is simply trying to make it easier to endure future bout’s of the same stress. I think we men tend to put too much emphasis on the workout and not enough on the recovery. Especially at an older age. Get the minimum effective dose of intensity in the gym, then GTFO and rest/recover. For now, it seems to be working: I am actually happy with my workouts now…happier then I have been in the past. I think we were all sold a bill of goods by Arnold and the Weiders and all the other shysters out there. They convinced everyone they couldn’t make progress unless we bought their bulls~~~…we made them rich as hell and got nothing for it. Same old story, I guess. Go to http://www.mikementzer.com and check out the articles tab. There is some very good reading on it.

An educated, armed populace cannot be enslaved.

[Prophet MicahParticipant 1972]

4 words

Calestenics, Calestenics & more Calestenics.

No Wife - No Strife

[chirParticipant]

Did bodybuilding for 4 years. I could not make the gains that the other guys were. Steroids. Back when I was bodybuilding steroids were made from corpses. Not the new powerful synthetic stuff of the past 15 years. I couldn’t bring myself to inject that. So I slid into just strength conditioning and martial arts to keep myself as flexible as possible.

When you are purging water just prior to a competition its a horrible feeling. Feel like dogs~~~ left in the sun for a week. Ironically when a bodybuilder is ripped as s~~~ is when they are feeling the worst. First thing you do after a competition is to re-hydrate… or die.

It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion, it is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning; it is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.

[KevinStylesParticipant 2580]

I work out for my personal health, not for cosmetic reasons as I don’t give a s~~~ about that anymore. I just want to offset the negative effects of ageing like slower metabolism and muscle loss and that’s the only reason I go to the gym. And doing it just for those reasons is a lot less time/energy required than doing it for superficial cosmetic reasons which is largely just to attract a chick i would imagine.

[Anonymous 14]

BachelorForLife wrote:

I’m 5’6, 163 pounds.

Just saw you said you were 5’6″ after coming back to this thread. You said you wanted to get down to 115? That can’t be healthy man. Are you watching those Kenyans run or something? I can’t imagine anything under 125 being healthy for a man at 5’6″. Also, I know dudes who do ultra marathons, don’t do it. Don’t run too much, it will beat you up just like a bodybuilder does to his joints. If you are built like a gazelle you can put in some serious miles, but don’t overdo it. If I were a runner, non pro, not getting paid for it I would swim as well to stay in shape. If you just run all the time you will have problems at some point.

[BoBParticipant 823]

Prophet Micah wrote:

Calestenics, Calestenics & more Calestenics.

Four words and an ampersand.

[BoBParticipant 823]

Trailboss wrote:

Believe it or not, my workout for the past few months is this: “Push” saturday, “Pull” sunday and no training at all for the next 5 days. I workout on sat and sun and rest during the week.

I’d love to hear more about this, brother. Is this mostly machines?

[BachelorForLifeParticipant 483]

Nomad82 wrote:

however I discovered long distance running, and now i’m 100% dedicated to it.

Same. I was never a big fan of running until I practice it the way military cadets went at it. Afterwards, I felt awesome as f~~~ doing it.

I get that strength training is good if you don’t take it as far as pro bodybuilders take it, but in the same vein, I just find strength training to be boring as f~~~. I hate lifting weights, I hate calisthenics, I hate powerlifting, and I hate bodybuilding.

The only exercises that appeal to me is running, even if it’s only for about 30 minutes a day. I feel that when I’m strength training, I’m just f~~~ing around, because I’m bored as f~~~. When I run, my mind is laser focused only on getting from goal A to goal B. Nothing else matters in those moments.

Anonymous wrote:

Just saw you said you were 5’6″ after coming back to this thread. You said you wanted to get down to 115?

Well, certain BMI calculators say 115 is my lowest ideal bodyweight. Some say that weight is underweight for my height. Either way, I plan on getting to about 120 at the very least.

As far as my running, I’m definitely not going to overdo it. At most, I’m probably only going to run about 2 hours every other day, 1 hour at most.

Ever since I’ve stopped caring about external validation, I’ve just hated any type of strength training, bodybuilding, or powerlifting. Can’t stand it.

[BachelorForLifeParticipant 483]

Trailboss wrote:

There is some very good reading on it.

Thanks, will do.

[SpiderHerderParticipant 3758]

One thing that has worked for me in the past, and again since the last few months is a physical job.

I basically get paid to lift heavy things. Most of the time they are compound movements, so they work many muscles at once and force my body to keep the weight stable. I’m not tired either. Hitting the gym would do that to me.

I can add a few basic movements to work areas that don’t get sollicited at work (yes, calisthenics).

Anyway. Good day.

[TrailbossParticipant 1844]

Hi Bob, for the last 4 months or so it has been mostly only Cybex machines at Planet Fatness. 10 bucks a month to access equipment I don’t have in my garage is cheap. I usually warm up with abs on the machines or floor. If I am doing a “Push” workout saturday, for example, I keep it simple…2-3 warmup sets with a moderate weight, then an all out set that causes me to fail between 8-10 reps. The reps are the key: Time Under Tension or TUT is a 3 second positive, 3 second negative and 3 second full static contraction. So each rep is about 9 seconds. I see others in the gym do a whole set in 9-10 seconds! Time not under tension does nothing. Relying on momentum and gravity to bounce weight around and make one believe they are stronger then they really are is useless effort. The amount of weight isn’t really important as it’s not about ego. It’s about the intensity. But the amount of weight pushed on the bench press machine has been going up steadily so I would say my strength is increasing. Definitely changing my shape!

I will change it up sometimes, depending how I feel. I may do 3-5 sets of 5 reps on the bench, or a pyramid 10/8/6/4/2 once in a while. I apply that to most movements. The idea is to get the minimum effective dose, but train to absolute failure. If you do not go to failure, I believe, then the body has no reason to change. On a “Push” day, I do the Bench machine, Overhead Press and the Tricep machine. Training to failure, a couple of warm up sets and then one all out set using that 9 second TUT principle to failure. On the “Pull” day, I use the Rowing machine, Pulldowns with a reverse grip and then the biceps curling machine. I am usually in and out in under 30 minutes. I get in, do my s~~~ and get out. I am usually pretty sore and will not work out again until that soreness is gone. I’m older now and more recuperation time is needed then when I was in my 20’s. The 5 days seems to be working so I will roll with that as long as I am getting stronger regularly. Like I said: Getting stronger is a survival mechanism. The body gets stronger for no other reason then survival. It doesn’t care what you look like: The body is just trying to protect itself from further bouts of intense stress the same way getting a tan protects you from further bouts of exposure to high intensity sunlight. Some others may find fault with my idea here, based on their own ideas of bodybuilding or strength training methodologies but I’ll stick with what seems to be working for me.

An educated, armed populace cannot be enslaved.

[743 roadmasterParticipant]

I did a lot of the same things trailboss did, Followed a lot of the pro’s workouts. Something you should not do unless you want to do it for a living.
Happened to catch Jason Statham talking about his workout and it should be about flexibility and movement. After that cut out 90% of what I was doing. Need to get back to that more sooner then later.

mgtow is its own worst enemy- https://www.campusreform.org/

[TrailbossParticipant 1844]

That’s usually how it works: A guy gets interested in using weights to get bigger/stronger. Buys up all the bodybuilding magazines and reads all the articles from the “Pro’s” and then jumps into it. Usually something like doing 12-20 sets, 3-4 exercises per body part, 6 days a week, 2 hours a day. He drive himself straight into a hole by overtraining and gets frustrated. Then he wastes a s~~~ load of $$$ buying Anabolic mega this and that and makes almost no progress. After that, he gives up or the whole thing degenerates into a social ritual…going to the gym “just because”. The whole endeavor could have been greatly improved by doing not more, not less: but by doing the minimum effective dose sensibly, then getting the f~~~ outta the gym and giving the body time to rest and rebuild. Eating a sensible, balanced diet is all the body needs to heal.

Mike Mentzer was right: Americans (in particular) suffer from this ingrained, barely conscious notion that “More is Better”! More money, more women, more this and more that. More is not better in the strength game: The minimum effective dose is best.

An educated, armed populace cannot be enslaved.

[MaverickParticipant 811]

Anonymous wrote:

1. I hate bulking and cutting sessions. More so bulking sessions.
Bulking makes me want to vomit every time I attempt it. Every time I do attempt it, I feel bloated and I also feel like a fat f~~~. Cutting after those sessions only make me feel worse. If anything, I’d just rather cut all the time than feel the way I do after I bulk. Seriously, f~~~ bulking.

2. Bodybuilding/strength training is f~~~ing time consuming.
Having to eat every 2-3 hours is intrusive as f~~~. It’s one thing to bulk, but it’s another thing to have your whole day wasted because you’re eating like a fat slob.

3. Bodybuilding/strength training is for appearances only. Arguably for martial arts as well.
Seriously, this kind of s~~~ isn’t for health in any way. While I love the cosmetic appearances my extra muscles have given me, I have a naturally small frame. Pushing my body, especially my heart to carry around extra muscle (as well as fat) will only be a detriment to me in the future, especially in my older years.

4. Gyms f~~~ing suck unless you have your own home gym.
With all the thots and roid heads running around, gyms are disruptive as f~~~ in a lot of ways. Even if you loved bodybuilding like I used to, dealing with roid heads especially only f~~~s with your workouts even more so.

Which brings me to my next points.

Which brings me to my next points.

As a MGTOW, especially lately, I’ve been thinking about my long term health benefits as opposed to short term/cosmetic looks. While gaining extra muscle isn’t necessarily a detriment to your short term health, long term, it can hinder it a lot. Especially in old age where you’re not as active and all that muscle turns to fat because of inactivity.

Which is why I plan on only doing traditional cardio; (running) every day or every other day out of the week for about 45-60 minutes. I’ve been getting my appetite under control after my last bulking session and I feel awesome as f~~~.

It depends on your BMI on how much calories you should consume, but currently, I’m 5’6, 163 pounds, and I’m eating close to about 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day. I feel the most comfortable when I eat between 1,000 and 1,200 however; which is what I plan on adjusting them to.

If you want to bodybuild or go for strength training, then go ahead, but I see no health benefits of doing so unless you’re pursing a martial art or athletic sport of some type. Otherwise, I find it’s healthier and easier to maintain a lower calorie intake while only focusing on running for weight loss and weight maintenance.

As for me, I see bodybuilding and strength training especially, as just another attempt to gain pussy. I figure if you’re not in some athletic sport or martial art, why the f~~~ would you want all that extra muscle weighing you down in the first place? At least for me, I know no one’s ever going to see me naked or f~~~ me, so it doesn’t matter what my body looks like.

Long term health is far more important to me. Which means strength training and bodybuilding is useless to me. I used to love bodybuilding as a hobby especially, but I don’t see any need for it anymore. I’m just completely burnt out on the idea of it.

Did you lift too often and overtrain? You can hold onto muscle by lifting once or twice a week. Lifting can be part of a healthy exercise program without overdoing it. No need to cut or bulk. You won’t look like Mr. Olympia but you don’t care about that anyway, do ya?

BTW how the f*** do you live on 1000 to 1200 calories a day?

[MaverickParticipant 811]

Anonymous wrote:

Bodybuilding is fairly Blue Pill s~~~. Now, if it is for a sport, or you are a pro, ok (wouldn’t recommend it), but most guys do it to GET CHICKS. Guess what? In the long run carrying around all that weight and stressing your joints will one day leave you dead earlier or cripple and limping around earlier, just like Ronnie Coleman and so many others. I did it for a few years when I was younger, and yes, it does attract women, but it is a lot of work and some added expense as well. For long term health maintaining a lighter weight and not going too hard on the weights is the way to go.

https://spotmebro.com/ronnie-coleman-cant-walk/

Maybe Ronnie Coleman abused his body? Sly Stallone is over 70, still lifts, and is still in good shape. Is lifting itself bad for you or is it HOW you lift that makes the difference?

> For long term health maintaining a lighter weight and not going too hard on the weights is the way to go.

That is sensible. There are many different types of workout programs. There’s lifting heavy (ie.e. powerlifting), going lighter with more reps (bodybuilding), etc.

[Author]

Posts