Not at all.
I largely agree with everything T0ddday said. In fact, I should apologize to him - yes I was passive aggressive. Sometimes I just get tired of the criticism from people who don't know me, and I generalize everybody that criticizes everything with something towards me, I'm at that level that anybody that is successful is bothering me.
Listen, I don't feel mentally sane right or rational in any way right now. Expecting a rationally sound reply is just a wrong expectation, even if I try as much as I can - my mind doesn't work anymore, not nearly close. Sometimes when I'm doing stuff my mind just blanks out and I literally don't remember whole ideas or what I was about to say. And during the day I still think about suicide and all kinds of stuff, they just come into my mind non-stop, I can't shut them down no matter what, and I'm not sure I want to shut them down anyway.
If anything T0ddday is a pretty smart guy (obvious to anybody who reads what he has to say) and to my knowledge, he's never been condescending to anybody. It's just that his way of being blunt sometimes annoys me. And I'm saying this because I guess you want an actual honest answer, like to know what I really think. And this is it - this whole post will be no "hidden" thoughts or anything like that, I am/will actually tell my opinion as it is.
First what I agree with. Nobody should make fun of anyone else. I'm no advocate of fat-shaming, slut-shaming, smoking-shaming, or any other type of behavior that's intent is to hurt someone else. It's mean and it's counterproductive to actually helping people. Doesn't mean we can't engage in good natured teasing; people are different and might be positively motivated by this - but if the intent is to make fun of someone at their expense and hurt them we shouldn't engage in it no matter what. It's just as bad as what your doing when you suggest genetically gifted people don't usually think - how does lobbing passive aggressive insults at one part of the population help?
Agreed.
The only thing that bothers me is when they come in with this superior attitude to tell you how good they are because "they train right" and how bad you are "because you don't". They take (yes, I'm generalizing, get over it) their success as 100% their merit and think people that don't make progress don't do so because this and that and the other thing. I tired of these arrogant pricks.
It's like having your parents' money to start businesses and then telling poor people that "they don't work hard enough" and that's why they're poor. Well how about the initial money (genetics) that mommy and daddy gave you for you to be successful? How about those money? Nevermind when they bankrupt one business and then still have to money to start another one and maybe another one after that and so on.
Yes, I'm digressing here into economics but genetically gifted people that tell all the others "shit" piss me off too much. That's all.
The question I have for you is how confident are you that you are really doing everything perfect? It's hard for me to be overly critical of people's training over the internet - like you said I don't know your injury history, how recovered you were, etc. However, some things (diet) are easy.
No, diet isn't easy. Not easy at all. I viscerally HATE anything that has to do with food: talking about food, preparing food, counting calories, shopping for food, anything. I've grown up with my dad hating this too, denying anything I wanted, I always ate what my mom cooked and that's it. I've formed myself in decades of this to absolutely hate anything that has to do with it. I also think a ton of it is marketing and plain out bullshit - I don't believe the labels are true (who the fuck knows how they did that analysis of the content of the food, why should I believe that is actually authentic) and even if I did, I can't be bothered to do all that stuff. It would take a tremendous amount of time to sort out food (something that I viscerally hate) and it costs a lot, and this and that and 100 things more.
Yes, call me crazy, a child, not serious enough, anything. I just don't want to do it.
So yeah, I'm by no means doing everything perfect. But it so happens that I have the rest of my life too. I've grown up barely affording to eat chocolate and stuff like that, no money for them, so now I want to eat what I couldn't as a kid. Again, blame me, throw the first stone, whatever. Tell me that I shouldn't complain since I don't do "what's needed". I think I compensate by not doing anything else that is "bad" in terms of nutrition - I don't eat fast foods, I'm not a guy that eats a lot anyway (since I hate food anyway), I don't drink alcohol (except from the occasional beer or wine (singular) 1 time per month or so) and overall I'm pretty clean anyway.
So when Mutumbo gets dejected about not making gains but also mentions throwing down 10 beers on Friday it's pretty clear his only obstacle isn't being a hardgainer.
Yes.
When you try and lean out but insist on eating chocolates daily it's pretty clear that you are not taking our diet as seriously as you should be.
Yes. Because I honestly think it wouldn't make a difference and for me to try to get rid of that and still see no results - I couldn't accept that.
But that same variation doesn't exist for body composition... So if you are trying to maximize your jump but getting lean (single digit BF) and just can't seem to do it... then seriously just stop whining about being a hardgainer.
Single digit BF would mean me being OCD about any calorie that enters my mouth (assuming I actually believe the labels to begin with). Otherwise I don't see it happening during my lifetime.
Then it means a lot of other things - money to buy quality foods, eating foods I don't enjoy/like (yes, throw the book at me for caring about this), actually doing the buying, convince my mom to cook them/cook them myself (no, I hate that shit) and so on and so forth. So unless I magically get over my hate of food-related "things", there's a very small chance of anything happening on this front.
At least I'm trying "some" efforts on this front, in these last few days, in order to get lighter.
You have a clearly attainable goal that you can't accomplish because of a lack of discipline and effort.
Yes.
Focus on that rather than making excuses.
You have the excuses above. Are they excuses? Yes. But considering I'm not exactly mentally sane and I really really really really really hate stuff regarding food, well, that's the situation. It's hard for me to explain how much I hate it. And it's more than what I can write here. In fact, since I'm on a honesty rampage, here you go: my dad used to beat me up if I didn't want to eat an apricot. Literally. I didn't like them at all, he would close me in the kitchen with him and beat me up if I didn't want to eat it. And ever since then, I haven't ate EVER an apricot (this was ~20-25 years ago).
There are similar things that have happened in the past, this is just one example. Now maybe you understand better the reasons behind my "food craziness". You can call me a kid, an idiot, whatever you wanna call me, for having this as a reason, but unless you lived my life you won't be able to understand fully what I mean.
2) Where do you get this idea that hardgainers must train less? You realize that recovery is an adaptable trait as well right? There really isn't convincing evidence that hardgainers won't adapt to stress and thus need to provide less stress to make more gains. What this sounds like is really convenient broscience made up by the lazy.
I understand where you're coming from with this, but sometimes that's simply not the case. Sometimes a hardgainer can hardly recover from life itself, nevermind tons of gym-related strenuous volume. Yes, some people use the "hardgainer" genetics as excuses not to work hard. But reading through the logs in here, that's not really the case here on this forum. Otherwise, yeah, completely agree with you.
There is no clinical setting for hardgainers who don't train hard but we do have training camp for sports and if you saw the body-composition changes you see after just a 2-3 training camp for all the athletes involved (including "hardgainers") you would be shocked...
I think you're largely right. To add what I honestly believe, training camps are made (at least here in Romania) so that the coaches can mock their athletes and also as a way to make a ton of money - they force their athletes to go to places where the coach already talked with a "friend" to ask a ton of money (more than usual) for the "housing" of the athletes and stuff like that.
I know a case here where the coach would get a new car after every training camp after scamming his athletes of a ton of money. "It's needed for the training camp, it costs a lot!".
Obviously this has nothing to do with what you said, and I understand what you mean, but I wanted to say this nevertheless.
What are your experiences with training camps and the body compositions of everybody involved?
Seriously, this is the only point that matters. You are not a hardgainer. Seriously. Stop saying it and more important... stop thinking it. If you or Luke told me you were going to quit your day job and challenge Bolt next year in the Olympics I would advise you not to. But that's it. I'm not going to say your never gonna run under 12 seconds or 11 seconds or set any barriers to you. Humans are amazing and the brain is amazing. That you think your a hardgainer is probably the worst thing you can do. You have set up a dichotomy in your head where you are on the hardgainer side.... Now you can't even draw motivation from an amazing performance because when you see that you don't think "wow, that inspires me to do more" you think "stupid genetically gifted person, god genetics are soooooo UNFAIR".
Well I don't "actively" think that. When I go to the gym or track I really push it hard, I'm concentrated, I'm doing my best. It never occured to me during training that "OMG I'm a hardgainer this is useless" - I always trained confidently.
But training confidently and consistently for 8 years only to see you never improve, you tell me how that's called. Yes, I know, you're going to bring the "yeah but you didn't eat the right things you were off by 1.28 calories on each night which over years totaled 32424.11575 calories added that made the difference". No, man, there are so, so many factors at work. I did my best with this fucked up mind and living conditions that I have, and with a body that was able to produce a 12 inch vert when I got started, and being a guy that nobody wanted in their sports team, being the last guy chosen in a team and so on. That's the genetics I started with.
At one point I lived with my mom off 4 euros PER DAY. That's 2 euros per person, PER DAY. You worry about "perfect nutrition" in these conditions. You don't know how that is. Maybe you come in with your personal story saying "don't think you're the only one living in harsh conditions" but I'm telling you, I used to eat one egg and bread and margarine per day, for a few months.
I understand things are different now, I can make decisions about what I eat, what I do, this, that, and that I shouldn't look back and use what happened in the past as an excuse forever. But sometimes stuff gets into your head and obsesses you, and destroys you, and messes you up long term.
In a weird way, it's remarkable I progressed "so much" considering all these facts.
The worst thing you can do for your progress is believe that you are somehow at a disadvantage. We can balance realism with hope, we don't have to be delusional. You probably won't ever be the worlds fastest man.... But I don't know that you can't be damn fast and I hope you start getting motivated so we can see just how fast you can be. This type of defeatist attitude would never get us to the moon and won't get you the results you want. It's going to be hard but you are going to have to start looking at what you are doing wrong, how you can do more, and how you can work harder and get more gains now...
Well, I'm trying. I might not be doing the best job in the world, maybe I'm ultimately an idiot/a crazy guy/whatever, but I'm doing as much as "I can" (yes, where "I can" =/= "what I really can").
If I were having a defeatist attitude I wouldn't have trained for so long. It just bothers me when people seem to get results so easy and everybody is comparing X to Y to Z and putting them in the same category like there is no genetic variations in between persons, not to mention vs people who use performance enhancing drugs.
There is a big difference in between people and that needs to be recognized. We should appreciate where someone started at and where they are now, in relative terms to each individual, not in absolute terms, IMO.
I'll just close with a reminder how rare you are. If I recall you are about 6' and you can dunk a basketball and do so in games. I train a lot of athletes who dream of doing exactly what you are doing... Very few 6' guys actually throw down dunks in games. How would you like to know that all these people see you and think "lucky genetic freak" rather than attribute what you have done to hard work... You are already in the top couple percent just by dunking at your height. Appreciate it, reach for the stars and start getting more.
Then I am a genetic freak. I could dunk at ~17-18 just practicing dunking. I was doing bodyweight calf raises then, for sets of ~50 or so. That's the only thing I was doing. And was weighing 67 kg.
Ever since then, with all the training in the world, I haven't increased my vert too much. Maybe ~10 cm or so. And made it more "stable" vs then. Then I could jump 60 cm, 75, 65, 90, 70, stuff like that. Now it's more stable. These are pretty much the only differences. I bet if I would've just dunked non stop (like I was doing back then) I would've gotten a better dunker/jumper than with all the strength work that I did.
So I don't really attribute my dunking ability to my work, really. Also, again - I'm 81 kg? Squat 1RM ~150. 86 kg? Squat 1RM ~150. 97 kg? Squat 1RM ~150. You tell me how does that makes sense in any imaginable way?!
And I would "start getting more" but as you can see, after 8 years of training, no real results have been happening.
Anyway, yeah, this is my opinion. I apologize once again, you don't really deserve any criticism. You're a smart guy with a very logical/rational mind and experience to top that off. I think your bluntness, if you will, in terms of how you write your replies (at least for me) gives an impression of arrogance, of "I'm better than you, listen up!", but that's probably in my tired mind.
I think sometimes I just want to be ignorant, it's really hard to be rational and realistic and "true" all the time (at least it is for me right now) - the world, as it is, is a pretty dark and unforgiving place. To stay true all the time depresses the shit out of me, so sometimes I just want to be ignorant and hide in that ignorance so I have a optimistic "hope" (not based on actual reality) that I can cling on.
Peace man, this forum and its members have a lot to benefit from your presence here! Upvoted your message by the way.
