LegendaryLife Blog

I got a comment today from a reader of the article I wrote titled LegendaryLife Profile: Mariusz Pudzianowski in which I stated that although bodybuilding has seen huge strives in physique, the same gains in strength in the power lifting world haven’t been achieved. This is the answer I would have given to my younger self knowing what I know now.

Question from Australia:

What I like to know is that these people (as you had mentioned) are from a specific gene pool. Is it possible for a person who does not have the genetics such as theres to achieve strength and fitness not to their level but close to it?

Answer:

Let me be the first to tell you I am not a doctor, sports physician nor expert in the fields of genetics or optimal training so my answer is based off the discussions I have with athletes of all ages, 15 years of studies in the field and personal experiences. Nobody wants to be “second strongest man” so I will re-phrase your question. “Even with bad genetics, can I become the world’s strongest man?” My answer to you is both yes and no. Take this advice at your own risk and don’t even consider following any of it until you understand the WHY behind it.

Yes, you can

Let me be the first to tell you that genetics play a large role in how much strength you can achieve but what is a far bigger factor is your personal ambition to achieve this goal. Some of the most gifted people genetically can amount to absolutely nothing simply due to a lack of desire. If you think you can become the strongest man in the world, then you have a heck of a shot better chance then the average person with achieving this goal. The more important question I have to ask is are you willing to do what it takes? I have met more then my fair share of bodybuilders, gifted athletes and just freaking huge gym rats, by the age of 35 have shot their joints to hell. You see, muscles are capable of growing bigger and stronger up to a certain point far faster then your joins or ligaments can. There are guys who take steroids who can double their strength within six months but let me be the first to tell you that you wouldn’t want to spend one day in those bodies a decade later. Read up on past sports heroes, pro-wrestlers and even great power lifters, what you will find out usually isn’t anything to brag about. Many need hormone replacement therapy the rest of their lives due to steroid abuse, they need a constant stream of sleeping pills and pain killers just to get through the day and their personal lives are a mess. The body can only take so much abuse before it begins to shut off, hence why steroids, growth hormone and a host of other drugs including pain killers must be used on a regular basis just to keep the momentum going or gains from fading. There are exceptions to every rule, but if you really push yourself beyond your physical limits, you will pay a price one way or another.

Ron Coleman for instance looks like the healthiest person in the world, he is HUGE, POWERFUL and quite intelligent but he is completely dependent on “supplements” the rest of his life. He is the result of fantastic genetics meeting incredible determination with lots of help. He is like the 0.1% cream of the crop with an extremely gifted body but he has also been working out most of his life, just look at the photos of him as he progressed in bodybuilding and you will see a slow progression from well built into HULK over an extended period of time. He has earned, in every sense of the word, the body he has but I wouldn’t want to be in his body if he ever reaches the age of 80.

Remember that only in this century was the 5 minute mile broken, somebody had the will to make what others said was impossible, the next day many others achieved exactly the same goal… moral of this story is if you truly believe you can do it, it will happen.

No, you can’t

Now for the cold hearted reality, if you are unwilling to take the drugs, unable to handle the mental stress of lifting huge amounts of weights and don’t have the muscular or bone structure that is capable of supporting massive amounts of pressure then you will never become the strongest man in the world nor anywhere close to it. You may be an incredible one in a 10 million man exception but odds are that you are not. We are all limited by our genetics, sure, drugs allow us to somewhat morph from one body type into another but the underlying structure that supports everything cannot change enough to turn an extreme ectomorph (skinny, has trouble building and maintaining muscles, long arms and legs) into an extreme mesomorph (muscular, builds muscle very easily and athletic build). Your body type is a birthright given by your ancestors, hence why I believe the next revolution in augmenting body types must come at the genetic level BEFORE the body has had time to form itself fully, soon after conception in a petri dish.

Here is my advice to you

I don’t believe in hiding the facts from anybody but before you do anything, learn to eat, train and build goals for yourself to make your dream of being almost as strong as the Bill Kazmaiers of this world a probability. I am assuming your in your teenage years, so don’t even consider taking steroids, growth hormone or any other supplements as they will screw you up big time (protein and creatine are fine). Your body is swimming in testosterone, this is THE TIME to take full advantage of this, eat and train like a madman, strive for 10 pounds of muscle PER YEAR. Work on your foundation, hit the gym and read all you can about bodybuilding and improving your health. After a few years of doing this and once you have stopped growing (your growth plates have sealed), if you still want to be the worlds strongest man, then additional supplementation is a must. I know it isn’t politically correct to say this but you don’t become a 280 pound man with huge muscles by just eating oatmeal every morning. Be warned though, once you take this path there is NO going back. You will have the body of a God for maybe 10-15 years if things are done well but expect a future of erectile dysfunctions beginning after your first cycle even with post cycle therapy (clomid, nolva etc.). Expect to become addicted to pain killers and don’t expect to be in any kind of healthy shape, if your body doesn’t pop beforehand, in your senior years. From one guy to another, to be blunt, if you have the body of a God but can’t do anything with a woman you are deeply attracted to in bed, it will tear your mind apart and crying like a little boy.

My goal is to live to 150 years old, as such, steroids, growth hormones and many other supplements are in my future but I won’t even consider the possibility until I am mid to post manopause (male version of menopause) in my early 40s… even then, these will be maintenance levels of maybe 80-100 mg a week of testosterone, nowhere near abuse levels that are exponentially higher. Sure I will end up with size 18 shoes and cranium the size of a basketball by the time I die but this will be my choice to make. It’s your body and your choice but I would advise you heavily not to even touch drugs of any kind until you have reached at least 200 pounds in bodyweight with a single digit body fat percentage in your early 20s, naturally being the strongest guy in the biggest gym in your town. If you cannot achieve this, then I am sorry but you simply don’t have the genetics to be THE strongest man in the world, you will become strong, no doubt about it… but not THE strongest, becoming instead, best friends with your neighborhood dialysis machine by the time you hit 30 if not sooner with no cute girlfriend or wife to soak up your tears after realizing you just threw away your life.

Where the need for male strength all began

I believe that men, at some primal level, are attracted to being the biggest in the land. For instance, I am slightly taller then Mariusz Pudzianowski but he outweighs me by 100 pounds of pure muscle. If we met in a jungle and had to fight for the last woman on Earth, unless I had a gun, I wouldn’t stand a chance in hell even if I had a baseball bat. Since the dawn of time, animals (including us) have fought for reproductive opportunities for that one incredible, one in a million, female… before wealth came into the picture, which provides security in our modern age, physical prowess was the deciding factor. Women want a man that can protect her and her child from danger. For instance, if you where in a jungle full of tigers, would you want to have a child with Woody Allen or Arnold Schwarzenegger?

The Bottom Line

I know I probably swamped you with more information then you can probably comprehend, I tried to keep it as simple as possible. Your job now is NOT to follow my advice blindly but understand the WHY behind my response. This isn’t even touching the surface of what you need to know, the answers are out there, it’s your job is to find them. Best of luck!

Check out Big Ron Coleman’s Website to get some inspiration as to what IS possible, he IS the strongest bodybuilder out there right now and I think his body looks better then Bill Kazmaier’s or Mariusz Pudzianowski’s for that matter.

See also: LegendaryLife Profile: Bill Kazmaier, LegendaryLife Profile: Sergio “The Myth” Oliva and LegendaryLife Profile: Mariusz Pudzianowski

I have many passions in life one of which is to allow others to freely share the influenced they have earned online with others. Life is just like the web but unlike life, you can now share your influence with complete strangers… Karma at its best!

Why develop buzvia?

Well, I have had this concept in my mind for a very long time, I believe that humans are at their best when they freely share information and knowledge with one another, just like the original spirit of the web. What has changed over the past decade on the web? Well, walled gardens, people FEAR giving links to sites other then their own because they don’t want to loose traffic. I wanted to change this with a simple and straight forward system.

How does buzvia work?

Each link on the internet has a source page and referral page, what buzvia does is act like a middleman which tracks both source and referrals by simply adding http://buzvia.com/#url#… it couldn’t be any simpler! The information is captured and stats are collected by all those involved. The beauty of this system is two fold, you don’t need an account to participate and everybody knows how to make external links.

Other cool buzvia features

I have a lot of knowledge about the web, as such, I have also launched a blog to highlight trends, experiences and sites in order to help other with their SEO, SEM and whatever other acronym you can imagine. I also look forward to writing about the companies that decide, in all their great wisdom, to join the buzvia revolution and see how much they can truly benefit by breaking down their walled gardens and embracing change.

What’s next?

Ah well, that’s the million dollar questions isn’t it, don’t worry, if things go to plan, I will have something truly special to announce in about two months or three depending on how development goes. It won’t be LegendaryLife, that is still deep in production mode but it will be something I believe equally exciting for a particular demographic of our society I am very happy with how WoodMarvels.com is coming along and am looking forward with great glee to see how this year works out for professionally and personally. Life is amazing when your having fun and everyday is like a vacation! I wouldn’t want it any other way.

The Bottom Line

Passion is a dangerous thing as it can only bread more passion!

Visit buzvia at http://buzvia.com

In the world of strong men where there are is strong and followed by STRONG… Mariusz Pudzianowski is FREAKISHLY “Bill Kazmaier” STRONG. What I find most interesting of all, even with all the advances in drugs, nutrition and lifting techniques, he isn’t leaps and bounds over what Bill Kazmaier was able to achieve decades earlier.

Mariusz Pudzianowski’s early years

Mariusz Pudzianowski was born on February 7th, 1977 in Biala Rawska (Poland) in a family that was not adverse to weight lifting as his father was a famous weight lifter. Mariusz began training to be the strongest man in the world at the age of 13 and with the guidance of his father quickly excelled in developing his incredible strength and abilities to competition levels.

Mariusz Pudzianowski’s brute strength achievements

Mariusz Pudzianowski is incredible, at around six feet tall (depending on the source) and weighting in just under 300 pounds, this guy is HUGE by any definition. He entered his first strongmen competition in Poland and finished a very respectable fourth. He returned in competition in 2002 and won that years events hands down and blew away his competition in 2003. He was then kicked out for a year due to testing positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2004 but returned to win his third title in 2005. He narrowly missed first place standing in 2006 but took back the first place finish in 2007. He is one of only two other strongmen to have ever achieved first place four times. Mariusz Pudzianowski has a personal best bench press of a little over 600 pounds (275kg), squat of just under 800 pounds (360kg) and is capable of deadlifting 900 pounds (410kg), still not surpassing what Bill Kazmaier was able to do in competition but astonishing never the less.

Mariusz Pudzianowski vs Bill Kazmaier

It’s a very badly kept secret that the world of strongmen, no matter what has done to “clean-up” the sport, that these guys are about as natural as flying elephants, both of these guys will require a lifetime supply of hormone replacement therapy. Bill Kazmaier won the strongmen competition three times while Mariusz Pudzianowski has done this feat four times and he is young enough to achieve this goal a few more times as well! Their strength is super human to begin with, they come from a very gifted genetic pool which they have chosen to supplement in order to become the absolute best at what they do. I have nothing but respect for both of these guys… they screw convention and do whatever is necessary to achieve their goals. What I do find fascinating is that Bill Kazmaier, for all his strength, seems to have a very different body type then Mariusz Pudzianowski. At least to my eyes, Bill Kazmaier is an extreme endomorph with his wide bone structure and higher bodyfat percentage while Mariusz Pudzianowski seems like an extreme mesomorph with his low bodyfat percentage and great defined musculature. I am unsure how much anabolic supplementation plays into this but I do know that reaching over two grams a week changes the body into an extreme fat burning machine while at the same time, extreme mass accumulator. The only caveat is if you can stand hearing your liver frying and the incredibly high blood pressure long enough to feel this benefit. Another thing I find interesting is that the strong men of the previous generation where never shredded during competition… they where big like a fridge. The guys you see in today’s competitions are actually rather well defined in comparison, gone are the bear bellies and beards, replaced with shaved bodies and defined abs. You see this change in bodybuilding as well, compare Arnold Schwarzenegger to Ron Coleman physique wise and it’s astounding the inroads that “supplementation” have achieved. Arnold looked amazing and huge at 220-230 pounds, Ron Coleman dwarfs him by a solid 50 pounds (if not more) in competition. They where both juiced, the techniques where simply not as honed as they are today. Ironically, these inroads haven’t been seen in the world of strongmen competitions regarding enormous advances in strength.

Have strongmen reached the outer limits of strength?

Many decades have come and gone now where records where constantly being broken thanks to supplementation of all types but in the past 20 years, although improvements have been done, I don’t see the monumental leaps that these sports and others use to have. I am willing to state that the Mariusz Pudzianowskis and Ron Colemans of this world are showing us that our bodies do have limits which even they are unable to surpass. Consider this, the heart in an 18 year old, 120 pound man is the same as in a 30 year old man weighting 3 times that gives us a window at how amazing our bodies really are. Our bodies are able to adapt to incredible burdens placed upon them, I can’t helped but be astonished at this. The next step towards increasing our strength? It has to be through genetic manipulation. Steroids improve what is already there and nutrition, although anabolic in itself, has it’s limits as well… only by modifying the messages between cells can we surpass today’s feats of strengths by another huge bound. Where will that lead us? I really hope I live long enough to find out… and possibly benefit from as well. Will there be a day when soldiers are made up of 7ft tall men weighting 450 pounds that dwarf even the top physiques that these guys have achieved? I believe there will but it has to start at the moment of conception before genetically limiting information is passed on through the bodies cells. Morals and ethics may stop some, but not others.

Mariusz Pudzianowski training video

The Bottom Line

Pioneers come in all shapes and sizes but regardless of the methods chosen, you can’t help but be inspired by their achievements.

Buzvia: Mariusz Pudzianowski on Wikipedia, Mariusz Pudzianowski’s Official Website, Mariusz Pudzianowski’s on MySpace

See also: LegendaryLife Profile: Bill Kazmaier and LegendaryLife Profile: Sergio “The Myth” Oliva

It can be said that we are all a product of one another’s expressed desires and fears, like a school of fish, each fish has it’s own mind and ways of doing things but the school behaves as if decisions are made by one collective mind.

What are or is a social construct(s)?

You don’t need to go far to see close to perfect social constructs, we are surrounded by them, breath them, feel them… they are as much a part of us as our very own flesh yet rarely do we actually stop and analyze the flawed foundations they originate from. With each interaction we make not only with our fellow human beings but nature itself, it shows it’s face ever so slightly, so vast our eyes cannot perceive them yet so narrow our mind pinpoints them with uncanny precision. Social constructs are the underlying foundation that our societies are based upon, they include culture, language, habits, food, religion… essentially anything that makes a group of individuals feel as it they are part of a collective. If I visited the North Pole, polar bears would think of me as food while, if I was a powerful polar bear myself, I would be accepted (challenged) as part of the polar bear collective. Like the school of fish, we tend to gravitate towards other with the same sense of being.

Social construct examples

Alright, you attend a business conference that is dedicated towards monetizing the internet, how many chiropractors will you see there? My bet is that unless you have several thousand people, the answer will be none. Why is that? Well, now I have set you on an interesting adventure that is a social construct… social constructs ask why things are in a particular way, analyzing patterns and systematics not only about why they came into being but what keeps them together.

Social constructs are fun to play with

When you begin to realize the power of social constructs, you can have fun playing with other peoples perceptions of them. I never joined the military but when I walk around in my military uniform, it causes civilians to “look” and “interact” with me quite differently then if I was wearing ragged cloths with a beard. Soldiers come up to me then they are puzzles, I look the part yet I have no badges, you see, soldiers know who is and isn’t part of their social construct based on certain identifiers that I don’t have on my uniform yet to civilians who don’t know any better, I can assume that persona with total acceptance. What changed? I am the same person, same mind, same desires… but my outward appearance has directly changed how people perceive my value to them to be within their own minds. I have morphed from being part of one social construct into another rather easily unless somebody looks at me closely.

Social constructs is serious business

Ironically, observations about social constructs are what people in the security business (police, army, intelligence… ) look for when assessing a threat level. People may be able to blend with others but what usually gives them away are their actions which don’t mix in with the crowd… it’s what makes them stand out. For instance, if you where a bus driver in Israel and a passenger was about to come on who was sweating profusely, had either an intense gaze or lack thereof, you best get the heck out of dodge ASAP. Knowing who is and isn’t part of a group, on an instinctual level is a skill that few people bother honing. If you want to really get to know somebody in a very quick fashion, ignore EVERYTHING they say and instead, look at their body movements. If somebody leans towards you when you speak, it means they are interested in what you have to say, if somebody is walking in a zig-zag pattern, it means they aren’t “all there” and the list goes on. What I am trying to say is that by analyzing why people of a particular group act a certain way towards one another, you learn how to differentiate those who belong vs those who do not. Body language is an essential part of this.

Benefits of social construct knowledge

Once you realize the mannerisms and patterns of people of a particular social construct, it becomes rather easy to morph to the point where you are accepted by them. Like I mentioned previously, most people are attracted by like minded people… they draw comfort from being around others whom they have shared similar experiences with. Back to my soldiers uniform, as I mentioned, those in the military saw me as kinda weird but not the public… why? Well, if you study enough social interactions in life you will realize one vital thing, most people pay very little attention to what they are actually doing or perceiving. If a civilian looked at my uniform, they would notice there is NO badges, no name tag, no country flag and the list goes on… but most simply accept the color scheme as being enough to quantify me into a particular group within their mind. What’s the benefit to all this? Easy, once you know what to do and when, you can learn to control your own social constructs. Mastering your own inherited social constructs allows you to be far more effective at communicating with crowds of all types… the more people can identify some of themselves within you, the more they will understand what you are telling them. This has proven invaluable to me in both the business world and social circumstances.

The Bottom Line

Study others so that you can learn to control and morph yourself.

To say I enjoy working out would be an understatement… I LOVE working out. The more my muscles hurt the next day, the better I feel! I am not a masochist but I feel weird if some part of my body isn’t in some sort of pain on a daily basis.

Tips to improve your health and get more out of a workout

Here are my top 10 tips to improve your overall health and fitness, follow these at your own risk and be sure to always get a checkup by a doctor before partaking on anything that will stress your body.

10: Change your routine!

My exercises have evolved over the past decades from a regimented one in which I had to do 3 sets of one exercise followed using x weight with y periods of recovery between them. I am to the point now that it just doesn’t do anything for me anymore to follow this for more then a two week basis, my body just adapts too quickly. I now have a very simple regimen in which I have a different routine each time I enter the gym created in my head. I know I am going chest and back for instance today, so I go into the gym and start lifting what feels right. Regardless, never do the same identical exercise twice in a month.

9: Change your reps and sets every few weeks

I went from doing three to four sets of 8 reps to three to four sets of 20 reps… man did my body respond big time to that! I gained 2 kilograms in a month doing this… without taking protein powder, creatine nor any other supplement beyond a multi-vitamin. By the time you have done six to eight exercises with little rest in between them this way, the blood in any body part you have concentrated on feels like it’s about to explode out of the muscle. FANTASTIC! I managed to shock the hell out of my central nervous system and it was forced to adapt big time. So one month I went from 3-4×8 then 3-4×20 then back to 3-4×6, I think I will try 30 next time (I am doing this using drop sets by the way… for added difficulty).

8: The gym is a battlefield, your enemy the weight… it must be conquered!

I know I look a little weird wearing an army uniform when I workout, it keeps people away from me but also creates an internal image as to what I am doing there to begin with. I am not in the gym to talk, I am not in the gym to make friends, I am there to push my body and mind beyond it’s comfort zone. I am there to vanquish self-doubt, tell the weight whose boss and most importantly, try to attract some of the eye candy that surrounds me To me, a gym is a place of sacrifice, hard work and endless challenges. If you treat each workout like it’s a mission, you will get much more out of it.

7: Challenge others

If I see a guy doing squats and it happens to be my leg day, I can’t help but go to the rack right next to him, load up my bar with a little more weight and begin banging out the reps. I did this once with a guy who was 6 ft 3 and very well built, I didn’t realize his warm-up was my max weight… he cleaned my clock but you know what… at least I stepped up to the challenge without fear nor hesitation. Of course, this is more fun when you can motivate others to push their bodies further, bodybuilding is a game of one-up-man-ship, fair or otherwise, that is how you gain the respect of those at all levels.

6: Take care of your lower back

I keep getting reminded when I take my lower back for granted, just about every exercise from leg curls to standing dumbbell flies requires a lot of work from… you guessed it, your lower back (and abs) to keep you balanced. No matter how strong your legs are, no matter how many inches your arms, everybody has one achilles heel which is their lower back. Begin neglecting your lower back and EVERYTHING gets affected both at the gym and elsewhere. It isn’t any fun waking up in the morning feeling like an elephant used your lower back as a trampoline anymore then it is to have trouble sitting in an office chair for an extended period of time with a throbbing ache. A healthy lower back is vital to a healthy life and body.

5: Machines are for warming up and safely maxing yourself out

People who do entire exercise regimes using machines are loosing out big time on what they could be getting out of their time. It all comes down to neuro-muscular co-ordination or central nervous system optimization, that is what exercise does, it increases the efficiency of your neuro-muscular pathways, the fact that muscles get bigger and stronger is simply a by-product of this work. What I am saying is that there is a lot more stimulation occurring within your body when you use free weights then with machines. You are forced to recruit far more muscle fibers, neurons… you name it, simply to hold your balance, stamina and focus. Machines are great for allowing you to do what would be dangerous with free weights safely but they should be used as little as possible.

4: Bodyweight is an excellent weight onto itself!

When was the last time you tried one legged squats using nothing more then a smith machine and an empty bar? Well, give it a try, it will be a struggle. Same goes with pull-ups and many other exercises where the only machine you need is your own body. Free weights, machines and bodyweight all have an important role to play in optimizing your central nervous system, use them effectively for the best results.

3: Eat real food

Before you even touch a protein powder or the bottle of creatine tablets, consider this, nothing is more anabolic then food. NOTHING! All the protein powders in the world will produce zilch for you unless you include a healthy, whole food diet. If you can’t name the ingredient on something you are about to eat, don’t eat it. The good food you put into yourself is what your body uses to build muscle, produce growth hormone when you sleep and most importantly, repairs all the damage that exercise does to your body.

2: Rest and relax

Exercise produces a lot of micro-tears which the body needs time to recover from. If you don’t give your body enough fixing time, you are setting yourself for injury, over-training and possibly going backwards towards achieving your fitness goals. If you notice after a few months that you stop gaining, the best solution, more often then not, it to take a week or two off and eat as much damn food (read #3) as you can. You will not only gain weight but your strength will also increase along with muscle size.

1: Never stop learning

Like all things in life, the moment you stop allowing new thoughts, training ideas or others access to your methodologies, you will stop progressing. Health and fitness is no different. If you learn of a new training system that counters everything you have been taught, don’t ignore it, give it a try, maybe you will learn something that will go a long way towards improving yourself.

The Bottom Line

Weight training is as vital to a body as breathing, without it, you can never achieve your full potential as a human being.