Why you should (must) train like old-school bodybuilders

When you see the bodybuilding champions today… 

You’ll guarantee 2 things… 

1. They have big muscles 
2. They experience a tons of injury in their career 

For example, Chris Bumstead has had lat, shoulder, biceps, and knee injuries in his career as a bodybuilder.

Or Dorian Yates… 

He had a full hip replacement, a bicep tear that retired him, and a nearly completely detached tricep tendon.

But here’s the thing…

The modern fitness industry just doesn’t really give real attention to this kind of thingd. 

The fitness industry just pushes these “Injury will come,”You can’t avoid injury” things”

They kinda make injury a normal thing to happen.

But what if the person that experience injury is you…

You can’t train; you must pay the $20k medical bills. Every task in your daily life hurts, or even if you got a leg injury, you might not walk for a year.

And being real… after you do all these things, would you come back to training? Of course not! And it’s normal!

The not-so-normal thing is the fitness industry makes injury normal, when in reality, it’s the #1 reason people stop training.

And so, the simple question is…

Do you want to get injured or not?

If you don’t want to get injured, then don’t follow the people that trained and got injured.

Follow the people that have trained and still healthy until today.

And those guys are the old-school bodybuilder (search up Frank Zane, Tom Platz, and Robby Robinson’s physiques at 70 years old).

Those guys never had an injury, and still can train heavy until today (Robby Robinson still deadlifts 550 lbs in his 70s)

And the secret to their longevity is just 2 things:

1. Prioritize free weights in compound movement
2. Combine powerlifting and bodybuilding 

When you do compound movement, you move a lot of weight. 

And this is where your joints must dictate the movement.

Doing machines in compound movement is like when you’re driving, and you know you should go a little bit right because there is a car in front of you, but someone you don’t know force you to stay straight and just crashes the car forward.

That’s literally what happens when you use machines, your joints don’t dictate the movement, but machines do.

The other ‘secret’ is to combine powerlifting and bodybuilding.

Here’s a fun fact: a lot of injury in the gym are not muscle injuries but tendon injuries. 

And tendons can only be trained when you do slow reps.

So when you do a 300 lb bench press, you wouldn’t lift it in 1 second. You may need 3 – 5 seconds. And that’s where the tendons grow.

And this is why powerlifting becomes important.

Every powerlifter has strong ligaments and tendons, which is one of the most contributing factor to injury-free training.

So, to summarise up…

To have injury-free training, you have to do these 2 things:

1. Prioritize free weights in compound movement
2. Combine powerlifting and bodybuilding

Kevin | BuildlikeArnold.