Venting Frustration... be warned!

I was venting my frustration on my poor girlfriend’s weary ears and finally decided to give it a shot as a post.
I’m giving the reader a fair warning; it’s going to be long.
And… be warned, I’m pissed off  8^)

I’m a beginner, started three months ago without the ability to do one single pull up and no more than a few push ups and an overall bad condition.

I’m the type of person who, once sets his mind on doing something, will set out to do it. I like working toward goals, I like achieving these goals and I like knowing that I achieved them.
That said, my goals were not clear to me, not that they are crystal clear now but at first I wasn’t sure I’m into “bodybuilding”, I was far more interested in getting in shape.
Now I’m definitely interested in getting stronger and building muscle but (now coming to the annoying reason that keeps pissing me off on a daily basis) I learned that no matters how much I read and how many videos I watch, people, as it appears, do not agree on anything. Nada, nothing at all! And that, as a beginner, is often tiring and frustrating as hell.

•   Some claim that nutrition is key factor; others don’t pay much attention to it.
•   Some claim that you should reach ‘failure’ on every set, others claim that reaching failure will burn your CNS and such and some just say that you should reach failure on the last set.
•   Some say that you don’t need to lift heavy to gain muscle while others say that if your weight hasn’t changed within a year you will not gain a single gram (of muscle) in that year.
•   Some say that cardio is obligatory and others don’t even bother doing it.
•   Some say that the best (and possibly only way) to build muscle is doing compound exercises and others just do an hour of curls and French press (which the first may think of it as straining the muscles and reaching fatigue)
•   Some say eat the yoke, other say toss it… and some just eat the shell (joking)
•   Some say to do crunches with lots of weight while others don’t use weight at all.
•   Some say that crunches don’t have enough ROM so they use a pillow while others say that doing it on the floor is simply anatomically incorrect and suggest hanging leg lifts
•   Some say that working on small muscles like shoulders or even core for that matter is immaterial since those will be worked via other compound exercises while others allocate a full day’s workout specifically for these parts
•   Some say to hit the muscle with a few different exercises while others say that it’s impossible to separate, or rather, work, on certain muscle areas (or fibers for that matter) and you can only work on the muscle as a whole
•   Some say that this or that exercise is good, other say it’s bad.


It’s tiring and frustrating.
All I want is to be certain that the routine I’m following and the weight I’m lifting are the correct ones.
I’m not looking for any titles; I don’t care if I’m a “beginner” or an “intermediate” etc.
What I care for is getting the best results that I can without ever having to suffer health problems.

If I’ll be honest I’m not even sure what is the difference between full body workouts, compound exercises and isolation exercises.

I switched from the Intermediate W.O to the Advanced Intermediate W.O because I “felt” that I’m ready to work harder and I’ll “need” the resting time.
Is it true? Was that assumption correct? I have no idea!

I do realize that I have a lot of mental blocks on how much I can do.

The_Wolf said that no advanced intermediate uses 8kg for rows and as a comparison he said that he is using 46kg.
That truly made me reevaluate what I’m doing…
Yesterday I tried to do rows with 20kg and, surprisingly enough, it wasn’t that difficult!!
So for obvious reasons I’m a bit confused now because what does that mean??
According to Uglok if I can do 9 pull-ups (9 being my failure) then I should go with 3 sets of 5 reps each. So, does that mean that if I can do rows, say, 8-10 reps with 20-30kg then I should do 3 sets with… dunno… 15kg? or maybe that means that I should push as hard as I can because as it turns out I have no idea of my own limits?

Also, if I can’t push myself as hard as needed and my weight(s) don’t match the routine, does that mean I should go back to the Intermediate routine? Or, maybe I just need to use more weight – which apparently I can!?
Or maybe I just need a different routine since (as it seems to me) Scooby’s one doesn’t quite fit me.

Another problem that I have is fear, yes, some exercises scare me. For instance, doing DB flys with a lot of weight scares me because if something happens I either smash myself or the house.
In addition to that, since I discovered that I can’t do hamstrings a-la-Scooby’s way and many of the exercises suggested by Mr. Wolf or others will cost further purchases and further hassle (like building all sorts of rope exercises etc) I kind of feel cheated.
I’m just being honest here, I mean, if I knew I’ll have to spend so much time and money about more and more stuff I’d go to a gym because as of now it seems that every month that passed I bought something that cost more than a gym’s fee and I have far less than what I would have had I went to the gym.

As you can see I have a lot of thoughts and the fact you can’t find a clear cut answer is driving me crazy.

Another problem is trust, which is obviously, a tricky subject to talk about.
I have trust issues, I don’t believe anything unless I’ve read it in 40 different books and similarly, I rarely trust anyone unless he’s knowledgeable, experienced and in most cases… not 15 year’s old.
I need to see some credentials before I believe and having life experience is certainly a good thing in my book.
My point is that I would really appreciate a knowledgeable reply and it’s not that I cancel people right at the out set but I tend to trust those who publish articles and produce results more than others… so… if I don’t know you yet and I don’t mention your name please don’t be offended. It doesn't mean I don’t trust those I don’t name it just means I don’t know about them (you) yet.

So, Uglok, the-wolf, MercNil….

What should I do?

Pretty please

AND WELCOME  TO THE WORLD OF BODYBUILDING !!  The main reason nobody can agree is because we are all different! no exercise will work the same for everyone just like no diet will work the same for everyone. YOU need to be your own knowledge base. Listen to others and try things pay attention to form and log YOUR results. Same as with diet the basics are always going to be the same but you might need to "tweek" things for YOU to reach your goals.

Stop wasting time listeng to others and doing EXACTLY what people say and spend more time learning what YOU need to do IN THE GYM! if you think your going to get the perfect build by having your face stuck in a book trying to figure out the "perfect" workout your sadly mistaken.

my advice to you

pick a diet model and try it, if needed tweek it and log results. if it works great if not try a new one and follw same steps as before.

pick a workout schedule and plan, try it, tweek if needed log results.

Listen to others advice but rember THEY'RE NOT YOU! try something log results and then decide.

hope this helps..................... No stop reading and go LIFT!   lol

Plenty of us started there (myself included). I stalled on buying a pull up bar for awhile, since I was sure I wouldn't be able to do one yet.


Good. That's the mindset you want to have. Randomly one day I was sick of being out of shape. All my shirts were tight across my gut. My first stated goal was "make tight shirts look good again."


Completely agree there. In pseudo-information overload is enough to make many give up before getting started. The key thing I can stress here to help you filter information: what does this person have to gain?

If they are selling anything the information is suspect. Even if they are right, you should be less inclined to believe someone when believing them means you possibly giving them money (through buying ebooks, supplements, etc.).

That's where places like this forum come into play. We (Scooby, mods and members) are all volunteer. We don't make any money off this. In fact, I'm writing this post at work... so I'm loosing money by taking the time to write a response .

To be fair, Scooby and Evil are both youtube partners, so they make something from youtube based on the traffic they draw. But that income is fairly small. I don't know the actual numbers but I'm sure they are at most breaking even when you count all the expensive of filming and hosting everything.

On your contested claims I'll try and weed through them:




If you're within the first ~1-2 years of lifting, you are a "beginner" and this is a good thing. You will gain size and strength the fastest in your life during this time. Use a full body, compound focused routine to milk these early gains for everything you can.

Check out the 21 routines post for some good examples.



They're using those numbers to approximate % of your 1 rep maximum and looking at keeping above ~60% to make sure there's enough stimulation. Way more detail than the average person would honestly want to know... that's why Dodo and Wolf wrote up the 21 routines


Good. You should be scared of certain exercises. Squat to near failure alone in your basement with no cage and you're begging for trouble. I started deadlifting only after watching tons of videos, reading lots of the finer points about form, and started so light it was comical.


You can do hams at home. Try some 1 leg hip thrusts off a chair. If you can do sets of 20+ of these, then you're in pretty good shape, and can make them harder by wearing heavy boots:




Don't trust people at first glance. That's part of what we have the Reputation system in place for. If someone has only rep power of 1 and 3 posts, they might be right... but if someone has rep power of 39, and 5586 posts (Dodo) then what he's saying is probably right

For credentials, check out my profile and links in my sig

If someone with a reputation power of 30 told you to drink motor oil then it's a good idea then.

Rep doesn't mean what you are saying will always be right. It just means more people agree with you. Heck most of the time people give rep to someone else is because they find something that person said was funny.

Subject the claim to the experiment, which is to try it out.  Else, you'll never know.  As there are many methods which are claimed to work, how to determine which works?  Testimonies of bronies?  Statistics?  Results?  A moral dilemma we have here, which I don't have a clear answer for. 

Guys, before we derail this thread further with the issue of trust, results, reps, etc.  I think the main issue here is giving the OP something to start with and our mods ought to guide the posts in that direction.

What do I want?

Firstly, I want to be healthy and have steady health. For me that entails a degree of agility as well. Of course, in my case, since I have Scoliosis and other allergies and naggings. That also means improvement and prevention.

Second, I want to look good. (That means: ripped, defined and bigger)

Third, it’s important to me to be ‘capable’ and not just massive. Yes, strength is important but the reason I like doing pull-ups has more to it than just a back/lat exercise. It’s also because it’s an “authentic” movement, which means that it makes me more capable in terms of climbing etc. (if you’re familiar with this ozzy guy from fitnessFAQ, he’s a pretty good example, not the most humongous but certainly very capable).

Fourth, I want to be stronger.

I can’t put any if it in numbers; if I could I wouldn’t have to ask these questions.


Regarding routine(s):


Mate, if I had the knowledge to back up what I’m doing or the confirmation that such and such routine addresses my goals and will ultimately lead me to success, well, again, I wouldn’t ask any of these questions.

Part of my problem is not knowing what I should do and how much weight to use.

-   BTW, I have no idea what ‘pavel tsatsouline's power to the people’ is nor am I familiar with ‘wave’ or ‘cycling’ or ‘westside’ or ‘tweaking’. This is basically Chinese to me
I’ll look it up on the internet but this is a good example to one of the problems, many of the FAQs for beginners contain lots of words and abbreviations and basically short-ways-of-saying-something that in the end, if indeed beginners were the audience, defeats the very purpose of explaining the matter to them.
Maybe it sounds silly to you but it took me quite a while to “figure out” that ROM means range-of-motion. I literally spent time looking it up on the internet.

This to me will be the same as telling a complete beginner of chess (I’m a chess player) that the central duo is mostly exposed via the wings and over extension can leave your short chain un-prise and subject to en-passant.

I’m quite certain that it’ll take you quite a long time to actually understand what the freaking hell I said and that defeats the purpose if indeed my purpose was to make it simple and understandable – which clearly, for a beginner, it bloody isn’t

For that reason, with all due respect (and I do have a lot of respect by the way, a lot!) Mr. wolf’s 21 work out routines are not always easy to understand.



I’m not sure what you mean by that.



Wow, brother, lately I started eating like a freakin maniac!
I eat loads, I eat for two people and you’re right… I lose fat and gain muscle it’s crazy!


Regarding lifting heavy(ier):

One of my many problems is that I’m very thin. I don’t just mean that I’m not fat, I’m not talking about fat percentage I’m taking about my physical bone structure. My wrists and knees are extremely small and thin.
If I do too many pull-ups or fold my knees a lot (which is why squats scare me) I develop instant pain.


Regarding my nutrition:

I eat like a nazzi. I eat the best possible food within my reach and I don’t fail! When it comes to conditioning I was always quite ahead of my friends. Suffice to say that I eat well indeed and I don’t cheat, ever.
The problem is my allergies; with so many limits (dairy allergy being the major one) I can’t eat any dairy products or use whey protein powder. I can’t use egg protein either because it gives me gas (I have similar problem with real eggs as well) and there is only so much meat I can eat so unfortunately I don’t eat enough protein.
At the moment I’m using hemp protein, disgusting little thing! Quite revolting and annoying to use and worst of all – not much protein in it!
I do however "live" on Lentil soup and Broccoli and chicken breast and sweet-potato-and-eggs-pancakes and so on. Whatever I eat, has protein in it... just not enough to reach 150 grams a day.


About trust:

I’m afraid to say it but most of you misunderstood me.
I’m not the advert-freak at all. I’m not looking for shortcuts nor do I buy false promises.
My trust issues were regarding this very forum. Yes, I’m aware that most people here don’t get any money from the help they provide but there are still many inexperienced, eager, beginners, who in most cases speak too much (BTW, I’m clearly one of them and I’m not trying to hide it) when in fact we should be listening to those who already “earned” it.

Pick a well rounded workout that feels good, don't worry about the optimal this, optimal that, best is what works for you and you enjoy doing. As long as there are no imbalances, or anything like that, if you prefer bench press for chest instead of flys, don't worry about it, prefer flys, hate bench? Don't worry about it. Anything you do consistantly, try hard on, and add weight will grow the muscle. Yes, even leg press and curls.

But it doesn't have to be too complicated.