If I Knew Then What I Know Now
By: Matt Meinrod
How many times have we all said the line, “If I knew then what I know now?” These are the fam
ous last words of everyone at least 1 year removed from high school. Truth is, I’ve been saying that my entire life. If I had only trained the way I do now back then, maybe I wouldn’t have a torn pec. If I had learned what carbs I should have eaten, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten so fat in the off season. And why in the hell did I waste so much money on those ZambonWinstrol amps? In sports and bodybuilding, the name of the game is learning from your mistakes. So here’s what I know now.
If I had only tuned out that moronic voice inside my head that told me I needed to bench press, maybe I’d still have a pec attached to my humerus. As level headed and calm as I am most of the day, for years I had to be the cocky dickhead at the gym who had to show off on chest day. From the time I first stepped into my high school weight room as a freshman and put up 225lb, it was all downhill. I quickly made it to 315lb and by the time I was a senior I had hit the iconic 4 plates per side. For a kid still in high school this was a big feat. Of course, when I went onto college and lifted next to the behemoths on my team I was quickly knocked back down to reality. In college, the strength and conditioning coaches had us do a lot of heavy benching. I got incredibly strong, but it put a beating on my body. Even though I would routinely load 500lb on the bar and hit it for a double, I had several of those ‘tweaks’ that we’ve all felt from time to time while benching.
What I failed to realize once my days on the gridiron were long behind me was that to train like I was 20 years old again was setting myself up for a big injury in the future. Five months after my 28th birthday I was training at a sports performance facility near Orlando. This was a state of the art training center stockedwith Keiser Pneumatic equipment. It’s basically a high-tech bench press that utilizes the same science behind chains and bands, but with air pressure instead of actual weights. So there I was on a relatively mild temperature January afternoon in Central Florida training chest with WWE wrestler Bad Ass Billy Gunn and ASC Professional Strongman Brad “Wolverine” Dunn. The gym was empty aside from us, but f
ueled with more testosterone than a university rec center. I had 365lb on the bar with an additional 35lb of air pressure. I was extremely strong at this point in my training and set to hit this lift for 10 reps. I took it off the rack and began to bang out the set. On my fifth rep, while still maintaining control of the bar, I feel my pec begin to pop. I quickly lost strength and the bar dropped to my chest. It sounded like a t-shirt ripped in half Hulk Hogan style. Brad and Billy pulled the 400lb off my chest and I screamed, “Mother fucker,” as loud as I could. I knew I had torn this sucker in two. Excruciating pain and immediate swelling—within days I was literally black and blue from the top of my pec, down my stomach, into my obliques, biceps, and forearm.
What I left out from the story was that 2 weeks earlier I had felt a ‘tweak’ while doing 150lb dumbbell incline press without warming up. I had 14 years of lifting under my belt at this point with numerous could-be pec tears and I was still a big enough dumbass to not take the extra precautions to warm up that day. And to make matters worse I rushed back under a heavy bench 2 weeks later to ultimately jack my chest up once and for all.
If I knew then what I know now, I’d listen to my body, warm up every workout, and stop trying to be Derek Poundstone every time I went to the gym.
If knew then what I know now I wouldn’t have tried to bulk up for the first 10 years of lifting. Call it dysmorphia or bigorexia, I fell right into the trap of never feeling big enough. Even at 320lb as a starting offensive lineman in college I felt like the runt of the litter next to guys 10-20lb heavier than me. It probably goes back to when I was in high school and although I was one of the bigger kids in school, when it came to sports all I saw were the giants on TV.
Finally, once my days on the field were over I decided to drop some weight. Soon I would go from 320lb to 290lb to 270lb. My strength never dipped, but I got leaner and quicker in the process. For years I had heard my coaches te
ll me, “Meinrod, you’re too light in the ass” so I got bigger and bigger…and bigger. But what I was slowly putting on wasn’t all muscle. I was gaining fat. I was eating like shit. And I was becoming less of an athlete – all for the expense of more size.
It was only after football when I could fully dedicate myself to bodybuilding and relearn my body that I was able to realize I didn’t need to shovel hundreds of grams of carbs into my mouth to gain muscle. I didn’t need to down a gallon of whole milk per day to hold onto my mass. My fear of becoming small was all manifested in my own head. If I knew then, what I know now I would have taken my time to gain muscle – quality over quantity. One of these days I’ll learn the meaning of patience.
And when you think about something most of us can relate to it is the absurd amount of money wasted of Schering Primo, ZambonWinny, and Oxadrolone SPA. A lot of aspiring bodybuilders are young and broke. Shelling out $15-20 an amp for Zambon just to play it safe is righ
t up there with one of the dumber things I’m guilty of. Of course, when the results were average, my wallet was empty, and whenmy tub of NO Xplode offered me more ROI, I quickly snapped myself back to reality and dropped more of my hard earned cash on quality food with a more sensible approach to chemical enhancement.
If I could go back in time and redo some of my more idiotic mistakes in sports, training, and bodybuilding I’d probably have less injuries, more money in my pocket, and less body fat. Of course for most of us we don’t learn from others and often time we don’t even learn from ourselves. Would I change anything? Nah…chicks dig scars and now I have plenty of fun stories to tell people how not to screw up.
Until next time follow Matt on Twitter @MattMeinrod or read his archives on www.MattMeinrod.com
