When it comes to weight training, I am all for learning from others as long as it produces results, but I also believe there is a time for being open minded to uncommon methodology. There are lifters who reached a point where they weren’t satisfied with the results that they received from the way they had been taught to train. This produced a willingness to try something different, even if it contradicted what they had been taught was the right way to train. Of course departing from the most common trends in training methodology will often backfire with subpar results, but in other instances it opens the door to a whole new perspective that pays off with much better results. This will only happen among those who are willing to be independent thinkers.
True Independent Thinking is Based on Truth, not Rebellion
Some people don’t like the idea of individualism as they associate it with being self-centered and rebellious. You may hear someone way, “That guy is way too independent.” So let me be clear that I am not referring to independent thinking in terms of thinking in opposition to others just to be rebellious and spiteful to the point of intentional foolishness that harms oneself or others. That kind of independence has nothing to do with the desire to find out what is best or what is true.
Seeking The Truth
Independent thinking that leads to a better end through the discovery of a new truth or a larger perspective is good independence. It’s a simple matter of thinking outside of the box when the box is too small to be an accurate representation of a bigger whole. Likewise, a partial view of a big picture can be misleading when a full view is necessary for full understanding. It often requires independent thinking to break away from the traditional smaller view to see the full view. This type of independent thinking can be useful for anything, including weight training.
Ridiculed Discoverers
All through history people have discovered truths and methods that were right and true, but they were ridiculed when their ideas went against the accepted authorities and norms. Copernicus and Galileo had a hard time functioning within the scientific community because they believed correctly that the earth revolved around the sun when the accepted science of the day taught that everything revolved around the earth. Other scientists were also ridiculed for discovering truths that were eventually accepted as true and right. You can read about this in the article: (Ridiculed Discoverers, Vindicated Mavericks).
Independent Thinkers Within Weight Training
In this article and the article to follow, I would like to give a brief synopses of several weight lifters and bodybuilders who were willing to look outside of the weight training norms of their day in their quest for better results.
Bob Gajda
I am highly intrigued with the training methodology of the first person that I will be discussing. His name is Bob Gajda. Bob won the Mr. America and Mr. Universe 1966. He used a method that I am sure many people used both before, during, and after his bodybuilding career, but what sets him apart is that he figured out how to individualize it to achieve phenomenal results. The obvious thing that stands out about his training was the astronomical amount of weekly training volume. Bob used a form of circuit training that is called PHA (peripheral heart action). From what I understand, he trained hours per day with very little rest between sets, and he often trained his whole body on consecutive days.
Bob felt that the manner in which he ordered his exercises was the key to his ability to train with massive amounts of volume without overtraining. He didn’t believe in pumping a muscle with consecutive sets and thought it was much better to keep switching to different muscle groups from one set to the next. Bob reasoned that the pump congested the muscle and left it full of waste products that would make it hard to recover.
I have found some information about Bob’s training, but I wish I could find more in regard to exactly how he trained. Either Bob was a genetic freak in terms of his workload tolerance or he had a tremendous feel for being in an optimum training state, which means that he had great instincts not only for ordering his exercises, but also for knowing how hard, how fast, how long, and how often to train. You can read more about Bob Gajda in the following Link (Bob Gajda interview), and you can also take a look at the video to see what he looked like in contest shape.
Mike Mentzer
The next person that I admire for independent thinking is Mike Mentzer who is the originator of Heavy Duty Training. In my early days of weight training, I thought Mike Mentzer was the smartest bodybuilder of all time because he was able to articulate his beliefs and methods about training in a manner that sounded so incredibly logical. Mike was Mr. Intensity. While I have come to the point where I don’t like his training methods for myself, I admire him for departing with the bodybuilding norms of his day and I like his willingness to question conventional training wisdom.
When Mike was stuck and couldn’t seem to make any progress with the high volume methods of the top bodybuilders of the 1970’s, he drastically reduced his training and did short intense workouts. He stunned the bodybuilding world when he won the Mr. America and Mr. Universe titles by doing workouts that consisted of just a few sets for each muscle group. This produced far better results for him than the marathon workouts that he once thought were necessary to be an elite bodybuilder. It would have never happened if he had continued to be an imitator instead of an originator who was willing to be an independent thinker. You can learn more about Mike’s methods at https://www.mikementzer.com/, and look at the following videos that feature his physique and his training methods.
More To Come
Bob Gajda and Mike Mentzer are just a few people involved in weight training who relied upon independent thinking to search beyond the norms and ended up better off for it. There are many others who also thought for themselves and I will be discussing some of them in the next article. Best of training to you.