Hail to the Dinosaurs!
In my interview on SuperHuman radio yesterday,
I mentioned my experience with Nautilus training.
It's important, so I thought I'd share it with
you in today's email. The story begins long ago --
back in the summer of 1978.
I was in college then, and that summer I got an
out of town job working as a grill cook at a
hamburger joint in a place called Lakeside on
Lake Erie. Fun job -- I still have scars from
the grease burns.
There was no place to train, and I didn't have any
equipment, so I didn't train for the entire summer.
(Note: amazingly, I never thought about doing body-
weight training. If I were to do it again, I'd hit
it hard and heavy with the exercises in Dinosaur
Bodyweight Training.)
In addition to zero training, I also didn't eat very
much. Not because I wasn't hungry -- I was. But I was
saving every penny for school, and I didn't have very
much to spend on food. I ate oatmeal for breakfast,
a cheeseburger/fries/shale combo from the grill for
lunch, and Kraft macaroni and cheese for dinner.
The oatmeal was cheap, the cheeseburger combo was
free as part of the job, and the Kraft macaroni and
cheese dinners were five for a buck, so they were
pretty cheap, too.
Sometimes I would have beef liver with dinner (69 cents
a pound), and I'd wash everything down with powdered
skim milk, which I mixed with water and stored in the
fridge. It was much cheaper than regular milk.
It was a pretty lousy diet, and it wasn't very tasty or
very satisfying, and I got nowhere near enough calories
or enough protein for a 19 year old guy with a high
metabolism. So I was hungry all summer long, and my
weight dropped and dropped.
By the end of the summer, I weighed 163 pounds.
When I got back home, I started eating again, and started
lifting again, and gained back the lost weight pretty
quickly.
The next summer, I took another out of town job, and once
again saved every penny and bought very little food --
and once again I was hungry all summer and my weight
dropped and dropped, and I ended up weighing 163 pounds.
I went to law school in the Fall, started lifting again at
the university weight room, started eating in the school
cafeteria, and quickly got up to 180 pounds.
My final year of law school, I was super busy with school,
working as an editor on the law review, and working three
part-time jobs to make enough for tuition, books, rent
and -- if anything was left over -- for food. I was too
busy to train, so I hardly lifted at all -- and I was too
poor to buy very much to eat -- and by the time I graduated
at age 25 I was back down to (you guessed it) 163 pounds.
Anyhow, I got a job, moved to Louisville, started lifting
again, and started eating again (because I could afford to
buy food again) -- and my weight shot right back up to
180 pounds.
Two or three years later, we bought a house on the other
side of town, and I switched from the gym I had been training
at -- where I was doing basic barbell and dumbbell stuff --
to a Nautilus club where I spent the next twelve months
using all of the latest and greatest Nautilus machines,
doing the pre-exhaustion workouts, going to momentary
muscular failure on each and every set -- and sometimes
doing negatives and negative accentuated training. It was
all right out of the Nautilus play-book.
I trained so hard that after two sets for my legs I
would fall off the leg machine -- and I wouldn't be able
to walk right for 10 minutes.
I trained like clockwork, three times per week, busting
my you know what in every workout. And when I wasn't
training, I ate HUGE meals.
After doing this for about a year, I stepped on the scales
one day -- and discovered that my weight had dropped all
the way from 180 pounds to -- here we go -- 163 pounds.
That's right -- one year of super training on the super
machines brought my down to my "no training and no food"
bodyweight.
I went back to the old heavy iron gym the very next day,
and started doing squats, deadlifts, presses, bench
presses, and similar exercises -- using the 5 x 5
system -- and my weight went right back up to 180
pounds. (And later, as I learned more about the kind
of training I cover in Dinosaur Training and my other
books and courses, my weight went up and up until I
finally weighed around 225 pounds -- but that's
another story. If you're interested, read about it
in Strength, Muscle and Power.)
The point is, the super machines DIDN'T WORK!
I shared that yesterday on SuperHuman Radio -- and
as I said, I thought I should share it again today.
Hopefully, it will help someone out there -- or
more than one someone -- avoid the mistakes I made
when I was young.
As always, thanks for reading, and have a great
day. If you train today, make it a good one!
Yours in strength,
Brooks Kubik
P.S. If you're interested in getting REAL RESULTS from
your training, follow the programs in Dinosaur Training,
Chalk and Sweat, Strength, Muscle and Power, Dinosaur
Bodyweight Training, and my other books and courses.
Unlike the super systems, they WORK! You can find them
here:
http://www.brookskubik.com/products.html
P.S. 2. Save big clams on s&h by ordering two or more
books, courses or other Dino Products at the same time.
I love the Post office, but there's no sense paying more
than you have to pay for postage!
P.S. 3. Thought for the Day: "Experience is a great
teacher, but you have to pay attention." -- Brooks Kubik
