handdator

Visa fullständig version : I was never a big fan of Superman


Mass-Tech
2006-08-13, 13:42
Iwas never a big fan of Superman. I think it's largely because things came too easy for him. All Superman had to do to get his super powers was show up. Our yellow sun gave him immeasurable strength, invulnerability, the ability to fly, and X-ray vision.

Iwas also never crazy about his costume, either, because red, full-bottom-coverage panties pulled over blue tights just isn't a good look for anyone, except maybe that hunky Justin Timberlake who lives with Britney Spears.

Batman, however, was my kind of guy. The poor schlep didn't have any super powers, so he had to make do with what he had. Oh, he knew he wanted to fight bad guys alright, but in order to do so, he had to lift weights, practice martial arts, study engineering and science, and invent nifty gadgets. Plus, he wasn't invulnerable. While Superman had nothing to lose when he fought the forces of evil, Batman could easily have lost his life, or at least pulled a groin muscle.

Yep, the way I see it, the only thing that brought Batman down a peg in my esteem was his choice of a sidekick. For those of you who never read the Batman comic book, "Robin" wore a little Halloween mask to cover his eyes, a red vest, yellow Speedos, and cute little pointy boots. His always-bare legs were obviously shaven.

If I were Batman, I would have said to him, "Robin, I don't have the foggiest notion whether you're gay or not, but for God's sake, we're trying to strike fear into the hearts of our enemies, so would it kill you to butch it up a little bit? You know, throw in some leather or metal or something, and puhleeze change the name to something a little more intimidating than Robin, for chrissake."

Still, hanging around with Robin doesn't change my respect for Batman's accomplishments. Yep, in my book, Batman was A-OK.
And in thinking about Batman and Superman, it occurs to me that there are real-life parallels to those two super heroes in the bodybuilding and weightlifting world.

Take for instance the Christmas party I went to the other night (yet another one). After filling my plate with a variety of Asian foods and enough exotic dipping sauces to drown the Buddha himself, I sat down next to two human bricks named Jake and Arnie and introduced myself. It was obvious that they were both bodybuilders. Jake, at 48 years old, looked a lot like Bill Kazmier, while Arnie had the rounded muscle belly look of Flex Wheeler, along with the requisite 29-inch waist.

They knew me by reputation and remarked that they had read Muscle Media 2000 when I ran that ship, and had recently picked up a copy of Testosterone.

They weren't reluctant, however, to tell me that their favorite bodybuilding publication was MuscleMag. I was a good sport and didn't question them about their choice of reading material, but it later became apparent why they liked that particular mag.

After talking about the bodybuilding industry for awhile, the conversation naturally segued into training and nutrition.
Let me tell you, my Testosterone brothers, Arnie and Jake, despite being built like human Humvees, knew virtually nothing about lifting weights or proper eating. Arnie, despite having striations on his triceps and arms that were so big that they stretched the fabric of the sleeves of his black, overly tight little-boy T-shirt until they were about a molecule thick, didn't even know what the terms concentric and eccentric meant.

Likewise, Jake claimed to only eat twice a day, the second meal often being a gallon of ice cream. He might have been yanking my chain, but I don't think so.
Drugs? They didn't admit to using anything, but their ears perked up at the slightest mention of steroids. However, their knowledge of drugs was almost as limited as their knowledge of training and nutrition. They probably used anything they could get their hands on, whether it was Winstrol, D-bol, or Tidy-Bol, with its ice-blue toilet cleaning ingredients

It was at this point that they told me they liked MuscleMag for the pictures of bodybuilders and oh, dear Lord, the gossip. And they wanted to know why Testosterone didn't have more gossip. "Man, we like to know what's going on with the pros," they explained, "We want to keep on top of all the dirt!"
Oh, the pain, my brothers! Had the plum sauce for my salmon eggroll not been so tasty, I would have walked into the coat closet and blown my cerebellum out with a Glock. Old Mrs. McGinty would have to take her Andrew Marc coat to the cleaners so they could martinize the brains right out of the fur collar.

These two, despite having the bodybuilding knowledge of David Spade, were probably each about two weeks away from being able to compete in a National-level bodybuilding show.
It later occurred to me that Arnie and Jake were kind of like that slacker Superman. Whatever the two had, they didn't have to work very hard for it. Like Superman, all they had to do was show up, and for whatever reason, genetics, a fortuitous combination of drugs, or our yellow sun, their bodies swelled like my shorts during TNN's All-Day Pamela Lee New Year's Day Marathon.

And there are plenty of guys like Jake and Arnie, plenty of Supermen, walking around. I can't tell you how many pro and top level Superman bodybuilders I've seen working out. They cheat their asses off, don't keep a training log, and rarely follow any kind of periodization. To them, tempo is the name of a Chinese restaurant, or what you call that style of Japanese cooking where you fry batter-dipped vegetables in oil.
And still, still they have great physiques. It's maddening. It's frustrating. I want to put my hands around their tree-trunk like necks and squeeze 'till their eyes pop out of their sockets and they look like Mr. Potato Head

Larry is another brick I know that works out at my gym. In fact, he's a personal trainer and he, too, reads MuscleMag. He told me he had to stop doing squats with anything over 500 pounds on the bar because they "made his prostate squirt blood." But does Larry know how to work out? Not really. He does high-rep deadlifts with 315 pounds, but he does them almost entirely with his back. I cringe when I watch him do them and I can't, for the life of me, figure out why they don't make his spine buckle, split, and skewer his liver like a shish kabob

He, too, doesn't know what an eccentric rep is, by definition or by practice. His reps, regardless of which movement he's doing, are like J-Lo's butt cheeks when she's doing the samba — sloppy, uncontrolled, and flyin' all over the place. His supplement of choice? He drinks something call noni juice, which comes from a weird fruit that grows on Tahiti. He claims it's medicinal, and that in addition to making you strong, it cures the heartbreak of psoriasis

But because Larry looks pretty good and is obviously powerful, people come to him for advice. They figure that he must know what he's doing. It's not much different than going up to an 8-foot tall basketball player and asking him to teach you how to dunk. Well, since the good Lord made him 8-feet tall, he could have the vertical jump of Jabba the Hutt and still lead his league in dunks because all he's got to do is walk over to the hoop and drop the ball in. It'd be like you or me taking one of those little cocktail party meatballs on a toothpick and doing a bombs away over some seated babe with tremendous cleavage

Both the basketball player and Larry got there because of some extenuating circumstances like genetics or GH or steroids or whatever, and not because of any special knowledge they possess. If you asked Larry or Arnie or Jake to train you, they'd have you cheating like a son of a bitch, following workout schemes that were based on cycles of the moon or bird droppings (or worse yet, Muscle and Fitness), eating like the bears that pilfer the dumpsters at Jellystone National Park, rubbing weird noni-juice salve on your nuts and heaven forbid, reading gossip columns.

I tell you dear brothers, there are times when I want to hang it all up and become a florist or dog groomer.
Anyhow, it's clear that the majority of T-mag readers are more like Batman. Most aren't gifted or in possession of any super powers. They have to work hard for what they have. They train, they study, and they monitor their food, and they may or may not hang around guys who wear yellow Speedos and natty little red vests.
A good percentage of Batmen eventually look like Supermen, but their abilities weren't a gift; they were paid for with rivers of sweat. And those guys are the real bodybuilding holy men; the true gurus whose workout advice is like manna from Heaven.

And while this magazine is written for Batmen, I have hopes that the occasional Superman, or even the rank novice (who are often on the same part of the learning curve) will venture here in order to learn something about bodybuilding and weightlifting in general; something more than who's sleeping with who, which fitness model just got butt implants; who was arrested for sticking an endangered species up his ass because the pet store was out of gerbils, etc.
With that thought in mind, we're soon going to introduce a new column called Refresher Course. Most long-time T-mag readers, as Batmen, will find the stuff simplistic or remedial, but others, like the occasional Superman or novice, will find the info eye-opening.

It probably won't appear more than once every couple of months, but often enough to ensure that there are plenty of Batmen in training. And for any Superman that got to where you are just by showing up, maybe the info will help your yellow sun burn a little brighter

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/805/supermanbatmansf1pm8.jpg

mystic[-_-]
2006-08-13, 13:53
"If you asked Larry or Arnie or Jake to train you, they'd have you cheating like a son of a bitch, following workout schemes that were based on cycles of the moon or bird droppings (or worse yet, Muscle and Fitness), eating like the bears that pilfer the dumpsters at Jellystone National Park, rubbing weird noni-juice salve on your nuts and heaven forbid, reading gossip columns."

:D

NiXPhoenix
2006-08-13, 14:46
Intressant läsning helt klart!

Cerberus
2006-08-13, 15:48
Intressant, känns som om krönikan var tillägnad de som kämpar hårt med träning trots att de inte har Arnolds gener.

Men seriöst, är det SÅ lätt att bygga sin fysik med AAS?

Trance
2006-08-13, 16:00
Men seriöst, är det SÅ lätt att bygga sin fysik med AAS?

Ja. Inte till Coleman-nivå men att bli stor verkar rätt lätt.

Yankeee
2006-08-13, 16:03
Ja. Inte till Coleman-nivå men att bli stor verkar rätt lätt.

Nu ska vi se hur lång tid det tar innan "OMGAASÄRINGET MIRAKELMEDEL"-folket kommer in och börjar tjafsa.

Empe
2006-08-13, 16:11
Toppenbra krönika, länka gärna till sidan där du hittat den.

Bronkitkorv
2006-08-13, 16:20
Orka läsa... helt ointressant... :sleep:

Empe
2006-08-13, 16:40
Orka läsa... helt ointressant... :sleep:

OMGWTFBBQ!!! en superman!!!!

Skojar bara, men det tror jag du förstod.