Exercise and Fitness Forum

This is the article I?m going to get all the hate mail for writing. This article will finally help me unload all those Earl Voodoo Dolls off my website. I?m a big target; all I ask is that you aim high.

I?ve been hanging around gyms for over 30 years. Some were hardcore places with world class competitors and nothing but a lot of rusty metal plates and bars, with a plywood platform and no heat or air condition. Others were chrome and carpeted fitness ?centers? where you are pretty much guaranteed to be kicked out of if you dare to grunt too loud, drop a heavy weight on the floor or ask why they don?t have a squat rack. Basically, I?m trying to say I?ve seen a lot of different types of people training in a variety of different gyms. Different strokes for different folks.

Gyms are great places to people watch. I love to observe people as they train. You can actually learn a lot about training by just watching others do it. You can learn just as much by the mistakes people make as by what they do right too.

I can?t even count how many high school age boys come into gyms every day and do nothing but bench press and curls. Done benching? Let?s do some curls. Done with curls? Let?s do some benching. This goes on for hours and they do the same thing every single time they come in to train. The bicep is one of the smallest muscles on the human body, so I?m not really sure why they spend so much time tearing it down. But then again, I?m not sure why teenagers do?anything.

One thing that always amazed me is that many women don?t sweat. I know some women say they don?t have active sweat glands. But sometimes I think it?s that new Minimal Effort Training program they?re all on.

You know, sit on machine ?A,? put the pin is the weight close to the top of the stack and move whatever body part like the picture on the machine says to move it. Their trainer told them to do it 12 times, so they do it 12 times while chit chatting with cute guy on Machine ?B.? They stop at 12 times, doesn?t matter that they could do it 100 more times because the weight is so light. Time to move to Machine ?B? and start the process again, but only after talking to the cute guy for another 5 minutes. This continues through the ?circuit? of machines and takes about 30 to 45 minutes, depends on how cute the guy was. So, without breaking a sweat, they tell everyone they worked out for 45 minutes today.

Ok, before you send off the hate mail let me explain. I?m ?not? woman bashing and I know I ?am? stereotyping. You can generally stereotype people because stereotypes are general based on reality, whether you choose to admit it or not. I didn?t say ?all? women train like that, just the ones that think they?re training hard, but not getting the results they are seeking. If you?re training similarly and not getting results, I have the secret for you but you?re not going to like it. Train like the guys.

The next time you?re in the gym look around and watch how the guys train. Not that all guys train correctly, but even the ones that don?t know a sit-up from a squat, put a little effort into whatever it is they are doing. Even the high school boys that, technically, aren?t using the best training program, still are putting their heart and soul into every curl and bench they do.

I rarely see real effort by women training except on a treadmill or elliptical machine. Most women, well, all women, can kick my butt sideways on a stair stepper or elliptical. If women would put in half the effort on their resistance training that they put into their cardio they would get the results their seeking in half the time. And yes, the opposite applies to the guys. We could all generally push the cardio a little bit harder.

I think I know the reasoning behind it too. I?ve heard it a thousand times from the ladies, ?I don?t want to get too big or muscular.? Don?t worry about it! It?s not going to happen, especially overnight.

Unless you have to shave your beard every morning, you don?t have enough testosterone in your body to get ?too? big or muscular. There are guys, young guys that still have some testosterone in their bodies (unlike us old guys), that do everything right, eat right, workout hard, rest and take a boat load of supplements and they still can?t gain muscle quickly or overnight. Building muscle is a slow process for most guys and it?s even slower for women. You will not wake up one morning after a heavy squat workout looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I guarantee it! It might be hard to believe, but Arnold didn?t always look like Arnold. It took him years of hard, consistent eating right and training to look like he eventually did.

That ?toned? look I keep hearing about. Well, if you trained like a guy, hard and heavy, and put a little effort into it, you would get that look a lot faster.