My first mass workout: lessons from the good old, bad old days

Flex, Dec, 2003 by Chris Cormier

With age comes wisdom, they say. I'm 36, which in terms of a lifetime learning curve means I still have a ways to go, but I'm looking back on 24 years of bodybuilding experience. Although that might not constitute the sum total of possible training knowledge, I feel I've learned a lot about what works best--and what does not work--for adding high-quality mass to my physique.

The most important lesson is that the present does not automatically invalidate the past. There's better and worse in both ages, and since I've trained through both of them, I'd like to pass on to you what I've gleaned in that regard from my first mass-building workout as a preteen to my Mr. Olympia precontest training of today.

I was a 12-year-old schoolboy in Palm Springs, California, when I started lifting weights to increase my strength for wrestling, football and track--and, for that matter, Hacky Sack. As often happens among bodybuilders, the more my body developed, the more I loved lifting, even though I knew little about it. For the first three years, I trained every school day except Wednesday, which was allocated totally to sports. Through high school, I also raced both BMX and 12-speeds, so whenever I had a chance, I bicycled. That gave my legs good separation.

As naive as my training was, I at least used a split, program. Monday was chest, mostly bench pressing, dips and dumbbell presses for a few sets, but that was about it, primarily because we had limited equipment at school. I was dying to join Gold's Gym. All I could dream about at night was having a Gold's Gym shirt.

Tuesday was shoulders and arms. For shoulders, I'd do some presses. For triceps, a couple of pushdowns and some close-grip benches. Usually I had a training partner for biceps and we'd do different barbell curls--sometimes straight sets, sometimes 21s and sometimes curldowns, where he'd do a set, then hand me the bar, back and forth like that. We also trained in his bedroom. We called it the dungeon. Were we monsters or what?

Thursday was back, and that would be pulley rows and pulldowns, period. I didn't think much of it, because I had good separation. The muscles were visible, and I thought that's all I needed. It wasn't until I moved to Venice, California, much later in my career that I learned thickness and width were supposed to be part of it.

The next day was legs: extensions, leg presses and a couple of squats, maybe three sets but not with very much weight. Most of my early training was only maxing out, just to see how strong I was. I counted reps, but they were always 10.

When I was 15, one of my highschool teachers thought I had good genetics and a possible future in bodybuilding, so she had me come to her gym. That opened a whole new world. Until then, I had only been interested in the marquee bodyparts of arms and abs. Chest, traps, back and legs were irrelevant. Since I trained my arms all the time, they grew fast, and my abs stood out more than my chest, so you can imagine how I looked. My chest, of course, remained small, and I was so embarrassed by it that I kept my shirt on all the time. I couldn't see my back and traps, so I thought Why bother?

When I graduated from high school, I was only 16 and had a lot to learn about the more sophisticated facets of training for symmetry and balance, but I had a head start on the average bodybuilder. I was also voted "best body" in high school, so I was way more developed than my friends, all of whom were older. That was sweet retribution. I was always younger than my classmates were, and I had wanted to catch up with them. I ended up surpassing them.

Reflecting on the journey, I wouldn't trade those seminal days, with all of my mistakes and naivete, for anything. Without them, I wouldn't have made such an effort later in my career to correct things. Nor would I have had such a foundation of strength and muscularity before I even got my driver's license. Drawing on this perspective, maybe I can help you shorten your journey to bodybuilding maturity by delineating what was good and bad about my first mass-building workout. Some of it I kept, some of it I didn't. Broken into three separate sections, here's how I see it.

SECTION 1

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

* I was highly respected for my consistency in the gym, which is now cemented into my lifelong constitution.

* Maxing out with weight was my only objective for every exercise. It wasn't smart bodybuilding, but it accelerated my strength gains, and that's important for a beginner.

* The volume training I used then would be called overtraining now, but it pumped my muscles with more blood and took them further into failure than the limited sets so popular today. I'm convinced it helped give me faster initial growth and recuperative capacity.

* Free-weight compound basics were about the only exercises available, but they are essential for building initial strength, size and stability.

* Nearly everyone performed dumbbell curls simultaneously, rather than alternated. When I saw Arnold do simultaneous dumbbell curls in Pumping Iron, that became the standard for me, as well. I'd watch my arms in the mirror when I did them, and I could see more biceps muscles react. You're curling twice as much weight, so you have to work harder, whereas alternate curls allow more rest for each arm between reps. With simultaneous curls, your entire body also has to react symmetrically, whereas alternate curls cause your torso to rotate slightly with each rep, relieving stress from the inner head and belly.