Old School is Still the Best... And Always Will Be!

 

Old School Lifting, Training, and Eating are Still the Most Optimal Methods and Don’t Listen to Anyone Who Tells You Otherwise!

Marvin Eder, my favorite old school bodybuilder/strength athlete.

     I like “old school” things.

     I train at a dojo in the town that I live in that is the only old school dojo I could find.  The others around aren’t really dojos but are what are commonly called “McDojos”—they cater to the masses, and are a great after-school activity for your kid, or for your Grandma who wants to “get in shape.”  The dojo that I practice at often has to mop the blood off the floor after class, and is run by a 70-year old, 5’4” black man who can still whip men twice his size and half his age.  He runs it like a dictatorship, as any good dojo must be run.  So, yeah, it’s old school, and I like old school things.

     I go to a Slavic-style Orthodox Church.  It’s as old school as religion can get.  I had a friend of mind, a German Catholic fella by the name of Richard (pronounced “Rick-ard” in German) who would occasionally introduce himself and me to people we met.  His introduction usually went something such as this (imagine a thick, south German accent): “Hello, I’m Rick-ard.  I’m Catholic.  This is my friend Chris.  He is old-school Catholic.”  That’s right.  I decided, once-upon-a-time, that, if I was going to be a Christian, I might as well find the oldest form of Christianity still in existence on this earth.  So, yeah, it’s old school, and I like old school things.

     In a former life, I worked as an engineer.  I had a manager, Martin, who was most decidedly old school, and he was the best manager I ever had at any job.  (I can say that now that I work for myself, write as a job, and do not have a manager whatsoever.)  He once proudly told me, and anyone else who might have been listening in the office, that a man only needs to drink four things in his entire life.  In fact, he was quite adamant that any man worth his weight—you know, any real man—would never drink anything in his life other than water, coffee (black only, of course), whiskey, and/or beer.  So, yeah, he was as old school as old school could get, but I like old school things.

     And I suppose when it comes to lifting, I’ve always been old school.  I first started reading muscle magazines sometime around the time that my father bought me one of those old DP, concrete-filled weight sets—which means it was probably ‘86 or ‘87—and, from the start, I enjoyed reading about old-school, classic bodybuilders or bodybuilders that still trained the way a lot of the “golden era” bodybuilders had trained; since it was the mid to late ‘80s, there were still a lot of those bodybuilders around.

     From the time I started writing for bodybuilding magazines in ‘93—I sold my first article when I was 20 years old—I have always written about old school bodybuilders and their old school methods.  It’s what I still enjoy writing about to this very day, 30 years later.  Which brings us around to what you’re now reading, all things come full circle.

The Current State of Things

     I have, for the last couple of years, tried to keep up a little more with what’s happening in the world of powerlifting, bodybuilding, and other lifting sports.  And I have tried to read some articles from newer writers, and I have watched more than my fair share of internet videos from “celebrity trainers” or “fitness influencers” just to get a feel for how people are lifting and training these days, and for what the current “fads” in training are at this time in lifting history, whether it’s for hypertrophy, pure strength, or a combination of both.  Don’t worry, there will always be fads.  That’s not a problem.  Fads, after all, come and go.  That is their nature.  The problem is when certain methods of training, lifting, or even eating are almost entirely forgotten—until they are usually “discovered” again by some future generation.

     For the longest time, I simply stopped reading anything new.  I didn’t read a single bodybuilding magazine—either online or in print—and I didn’t read any books or watch any videos online about training.  My reasoning was that I had read about everything, I had seen every form of training, and I had used pretty much every form of training under the sun.  And since there’s nothing new under that sun, to paraphrase the popular saying, I figured there was nothing more, not really, for me to read or listen about.  Instead, I just trained myself and wrote about the various methods that I had learned over the years, and still used.  (Don’t get me wrong, I still read quite a bit about training, but it was all about methods and lifters from before I was born.)  But, at some point, I decided that it was time to start reading the latest in training again.  And since one way that younger lifters now get information—and for some it is, unfortunately, the only way—is through watching videos, I decided that I would try to find some popular YouTubers (or whatever the hell they’re called) in the field of muscle-building and strength-training.  There is some good information out there, but I see two problems in much of the material that can be found on social media, or YouTube, or other popular internet sites for bodybuilders and lifters.  1. There are way too many videos (and perhaps articles) that just repeat the same information, and don’t offer anything really new, which means that a lot of lifters don’t get around to watching (or reading) the good stuff that is available.  And 2. A lot of the information, even the “good” stuff, seems to be too “circular” in nature.  By this, I mean that quite a few of the popular influencers seem to repeat what other influencers say or do, and the more that this is done, the more insular the information becomes, and, in the end, it’s why we forget about certain methodologies and/or certain methods fall to the side.  (This 2nd point happens so much that people simply no longer know what they don’t know.)

     In order to combat this, I plan on writing quite a few posts this year that are all on old-school methods of training and eating, whether it’s for hypertrophy, strength, or both.  And although this is just a small drop in a much, much larger body of water, it can be helpful for those of you who do read it.  Much of the problem in the lifting world currently is the fact that too many people read or listen to way too much information, and don’t simply “get back to the basics” of old school eating and training.  However, even when lifters do decide to take this advice, they may Google “old school training” or “classic bodybuilding” or something similar, and just end up with bad information on the very subjects that I’m writing about here, so be careful where you get your information.

Old School Training

     The “best” forms of training are ones that have stood the test of time.  If you want to get big, then you can’t go wrong with a full-body workout program that focuses on the basics for a few sets of moderate reps on a handful of exercises.  If you want to get strong, then you can’t go wrong with heavy neural training for multiple sets of really low reps.  And if you want to get big and strong, you simply need to do a combination of both of the above things.  As Pavel Tsatsouline says, if you get a pump with heavy weights, you will get bigger—not to mention much stronger.

     If you are new to training, and want to simply get as big as you can as quickly as possible, then pick a handful of exercises, train two to three days-per-week, and limit each exercise to 2 or (at the most) 3 sets for somewhere between 5 to 8 reps.  Even better, make one of the exercises the classic 20-rep breathing squat, and you have about as surefire a method as you will ever find for building muscle—all of it very old school.

     I’m not going to get into details of specific routines for this essay, but just mentioned the above paragraph because it shows how simple and basic old school lifting should be.  Of course, simple doesn’t mean easy, but you get the point.  In most of my upcoming posts, I will outline the best old school methods of training.  Until then, train hard and, most importantly, be consistent.  Consistency trumps all else.