Will1’s BodyBlog

Someone just showed me an article about Vigorexia, "The descease of bodybuilders" telling things like how we completely lose sense of reality by torturing our bodies and how we are never satisfied with the results and how we end up all alone and isolated from the world because of our lenghty gym sessions".

My fisrt reaction was to feel annoyed, but then I analized it like for 2 secs and had to laugh my a.. off.

I don`t see the effort at the gym or eating healthy food as "torturing my body" I don`t see how building bigger muscles, decreasing fat levels, improving your cardiovascular health, speeding up your metabolism etc etc would be harmful!

2.- As with every activity in life that you`re trying to master, you improve with time and effort put into it. Speaking in bodybuilding terms, It`s ok if you can bench press 20 kg in your first week ever, but after a year, you`d feel very frustrated if you are still benching the same weight. Same goes for your looks and as you become more and more proficient in an activity, you raise the bar, that`s just logical isn`t it?

Now, your standards are not those of the regular guy or gal who doesn`t exercise. You don`t compare yourself with an average Joe to see if you look good; you use bodybuilding standards to measure you progress. Sure enough, Joe judges you under his standards and thinks you must be nuts! how come you`re on a diet? you look great! it must a be a descease right! a mental one…hmm see how it doesn`t make sense?

I don`t isolate myself because of the gym, I actually invest 2 hrs a day, five days a week, not enough to isolate myself. The thing is that your alcoholic friends (exfriends?) miss you at the bar and they think the gym is killing your social life; they don`t see that you now have healthy-athlete friends that share your lifestyle and that`s fine and I ask, who`s are doing something harmful to his body anyway? I don`t think alcohol, cigarretes and a sedentary life is healthy….perhaps these guys are the ones writing about how mentaly ill we are in the time we are working out! can you imagine them holding their beer and a big mac writing about us? how pathetic is that? really, they should get a life!

…Arnold said once. And I couldn`t agree more. It`s been a while that I`ve been studying how the human mind works and how to apply that knowledge to bodybuilding and life in general for success.

 It is fact that the mind is a very powerful tool; the problem is that it can can be powerful both ways, to help you or to harm you if not used correctly. And the thing is, the mind is not easy to understand, didn`t come with a manual, and it`s not user friendly so indeed some training is useful.

I`, planning to write a book about Neuroscience applied to bodybuilding/sports. Neuroscience is just how our nervous system and our mind work. I won`t pretend to say that neoroscientists know all, man is very far from that, but there are some things they have found that are very useful.

Don`t you hate books that give you a lot of good information and tips,  but that are difficult to apply in real life? it`s been said that "information is power" but it`s not. Information itself is nothing until you use it, it`s different knowing than applying right? that`s why I`d like to research with bodybuilders and use their experience and actually put all this into use. I mean I`ve used all this myself and it`s been of great help, but I like to help others with these techniques and document everything and then I`ll have a hands on approach book.

Don`t know exactly the format, but you`re very welcome to participate with your thoughts, experiences and ask for my advice if you`re struggling with something, I`d be glad to help.

What do you think? comments will be very much appreaciated

Will