How Life Works

 What distinguishes top bodybuilders from the average is the extent to which they pump up immediately from their exercises — but most people have that ability to respond to a very visible extent. When I used to conduct the “Scientific Weight-training” class at the Boston YMCA in 1974, it was to test if the assertions of Arthur Jones and his Nautilus principles were true, and the results of his “Colorado Study” could be duplicated — and the surprising thing was that every person from young to old, well-trained or not, displayed a d   rastic transformation from the beginning of a six-week period to the end — but at the end, they had learned how to effect that radical transformation in a single workout.

In that manner, it was obvious that the effects of a bodybuilding workout could be manifested immediately — and not only after six months or a year. One knows from the very first workout that it is having that very detectable and obvious effect. That is why no competitive bodybuilder WILL NOT pump up before going onstage — and most do so using only light or even no weights at all, but obviously know how to contract their muscles without those aids. That can even be a modality of exercise — as was promoted by people calling it “dynamic tension,” or simply, posing (postures). The problem with many modern bodybuilders, is that they are always contracted, and never allow anybody to see them relaxed — both on and off the stage.

Muscles can either do one of two things — contract or relax — but some disciplines think that muscles can only contract, or only relax — rather than it is the alternation (change) in muscular states that is the magical power. That is also the health benefit — of directing the flow (circulation) to those areas specifically exercised, and not as some “experts” claim, that one cannot develop muscles specifically, but that the heart will pump the blood equally to all tissues indiscriminately. That is obviously not true or many people would not exhibit the grossly disproportionate development of their upper bodies to their less exercised lower bodies, and vice-versa. Such experts will tell you that there is no such thing as “spot-reducing,” so that the only thing one can do is exercise the heart harder and lose weight equally throughout the body — whether one wants to do that or not.

Unfortunately, that is what passes for bro-“science” — by those who have never tested anything themselves and are incapable of distinguishing any truth in any matter. They simply repeat unquestioningly, what some self-proclaimed authority tells them is the truth — and that is why it is so important to run the test themselves and see if those results can be duplicated. That is what science is — what anybody can test to be true, and not simply which authorities are to be unquestioned and unchallenged. That is not science but merely authoritarianism.

Granted, many people exercising improperly and unproductively will not show any obvious signs of change for months, if not years, and will never begin to question all they believe that has led them astray. Journalists and media celebrities are particularly prone to go along with the crowd and popular no matter how untrue it might be. So-called health practitioners rely on this faith and instruct never to believe in what one’s own body and senses are telling them — even to the bitter end — but that is largely the reality we live in, and why each has their own brain, muscles, intelligence: to distinguish these differences immediately.

Of course if one is doing nothing productively, that will show too. But staying the course for six months, a year, decades, will not miraculously manifest at some point in the future. Along the way will be measurable changes and landmarks that one is proceeding in the right course. That’s how life works.