Bodybuilding

101Quotes
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This no holds barred article contains uncensored opinions on

strength training, muscle building, diet and nutrition from
many of the lifting industry's top names.
1. “Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in
general.” - Mark Rippetoe

2. "Biceps are like ornaments on a Christmas tree." - Ed Coan

3. "The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of
talk, get told that you're a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you
the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective
giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be
my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come
and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds." - Henry
Rollins

4. “Sell yourself short on nutrition and you’re selling yourself short

on maximizing your physique development.” - Ernie Taylor

5. "Just remember, somewhere, a little Chinese girl is warming up with your

max." - Jim Conroy

6. "Fortunately, there is a solution, and it’s not performing multiple sets of

whatever cable Kegel exercise is being pushed as “The Answer.” Just a little
hard, smart, basic work." - Jim Wendler

7. "Your love for what you do and willingness to push yourself where others
aren't prepared to go is what will make you great." - Laurence Shahlaei

8. "My old routine was McDonald's on the way to the gym, coffee during my
workout, Burger King and Copenhagen post-workout." - Dave Tate

9. "If your waist measurement begins with a 2...EAT!" - SCStrong

10. “If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do
something you’ve never done.” - Thomas Jefferson
11. "I'm an extremist, and I hope to be remembered that way: noncompliant
and an artist. I do not want to be remembered as a nice guy. I want to be the
slayer of Bambi." - David Dearth

12. "If a man tells you he doesn't lift because he doesn't want to get too bulky,
then his testicles have been removed." - Paul Carter

13. “For me, life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not
simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to
conquer.” - Arnold Schwarzenegger

14. "If you're capable of sending a legible text message between sets, you
probably aren't working hard enough." - Dave Tate

15. "Last time I checked, lifting theory has a PR of zero." - Steve Shaw

16. “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at
the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.” - Mary Anne Radmacher

17. “Don’t have $100.00 shoes and a 10 cent squat.” – Louie Simmons

18. "I’m sure you’ve all read the latest article on the popular muscle building
sites about how to develop a fuller, thicker back with “these 2 NEW maximal
hypertrophy igniting muscle shocking lifts!” The title lures you in, but when you
get inside, you find a small man doing strange movements that make little
sense and use almost no weight. They aren’t making him any thicker, and
they aren’t likely to add slabs of lean mass to you either." - Jordan Martin

19. "A champion is someone who gets up when they can’t." - Jack Dempsey

20. "Everyone has the ability to accomplish unique feats, everyone. You
choose this. Become someone great in one other life. Forget about failing to
many. Who cares? Doesn't matter when you start or finish, just start, no
deviations, no excuses." - Tom Platz
21. "If you can't explain the essence of your program to a three-year old in 60
seconds, its too complicated. I've trained with Olympic medal winners and I
can assure you, they don't do anything mysterious, they just do the exercises
better than we do." - Maik Weidenbach

22. "I'm the strongest bodybuilding who ever lived, I think." - Franco Columbu

23. "There is no such thing as over training, just under nutrition and under
sleeping." - The Barbarian brothers

24. "The road to nowhere is paved with excuses." - Mark Bell

25. "As soon as a milestone is passed, it’s significance fades, and the focus is
shifted to some other marker further down the road. No matter what you do or
how satisfying it is in that beautiful moment in time, immediately you want
more. You have to, if you want to find out how good you can be." - Glenn
Pendlay

26. “I don’t do this to be healthy, I do this to get big muscles.” - Markus Ruhl

27. "Some people like to live without too much risk. They’re satisfied leading a
safe existence. This attitude of caution infiltrates into their goals. Every
successful athlete - or businessperson - enjoys taking calculated risks. You
have to. Especially in the gym when you’re squatting 500 for reps and you
can’t get one more but grunt out ten. Your nose starts bleeding, you fall into
the rack and that’s set one." -Tom Platz

28. "I don’t believe in bodybuilders using steroids. If a man doesn’t have
enough male hormones in his system to create, a nice hard, muscular body,
he should take up ping pong.” - Steve Reeves

29. "I'm not sold on one diet philosophy. I'm sold on whatever will work for
you." - Dave Tate
30. "I always get suspicious whenever someone suggests that it's the fruit in
their diet that's making them fat. I've seen a lot of crazy things in my time, but
I've yet to encounter anyone whose admitted to polishing off a bag of apples
while watching Dancing with the Stars..." - Shelby Starnes

31. "I'm not the kind of guy who tries to run between the drops. Sometimes
you gotta get a little wet to reach your destination" - Erik Fankhouser

32. "Discipline is doing what you hate to do, but nonetheless doing it like you
love it." - Mike Tyson

33. “To feel strong, to walk amongst humans with a tremendous feeling of
confidence and superiority is not at all wrong. The sense of superiority in
bodily strength is borne out by the long history of mankind paying homage in
folklore, song and poetry to strong men”. - 'Dr. Squat' Fred Hatfield.

34. “Learn it all, then forget it all.” - Bruce Lee

35. "Sacking up is 90%." - Steve Shaw

36. "Mediocre athletes that tried like hell to get good are the best coaches." -
Mark Rippetoe

37. “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong
man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The
credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred
by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short
again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but
who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the
great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows
in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at
least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold
and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” - Theodore Roosevelt
38. "Compare that to today. Today, we have the rise of the internet icons,
guys who haven’t done a single, solitary thing in the sport actually giving
opinions on training to other lifters. These are guys who never even totaled
elite but own websites and set themselves up as experts and actually get
interviewed for their opinions when the only thing they have learned is what
some college professor told them. No practical knowledge, no trial and error,
no accomplishments, and in many cases, not even an ounce of muscle mass.
Who in the blue hell made these guys experts?" - Billy Mimnaugh

39. "Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an
indomitable will." - Mahatma Gandhi

40. “The single biggest mistake that most beginners make is putting 100% of
their effort into the positive (concentric) part of the rep, while paying no
attention to the negative (eccentric) segment.” - Dorian Yates

41. "Most champions are built by punch the clock workouts rather than
extraordinary efforts." - Dan John

42. "There's more to life than training, but training is what puts more in your
life." - Brooks Kubik

43. "The bench press per se is not a risky exercise. When done right, it can
help improve upper body strength and size. It's only when form takes a back
seat to numbers and when it's grossly overtrained that problems result.
Injuries occur in the shoulders and elbows when the bench press is
overtrained, poor technique is used, such as rebounding the bar off the chest
and bridging, no other exercises for the upper body are included in the
program, and there are no core exercises done for the upper back. Quite
often, it's a combination all these factors." - Bill Starr

44. "There is no reason to be alive if you can't do the deadlift!" - Jon Pall
Sigmarsson

45. "Regarding the mantra…”There is no overtraining” Just because you can

handle large amounts of volume doesn’t mean it’s needed. That’s the crux of
the issue. Just because the body can tolerate something doesn’t mean it’s a
necessity for progress. This is simply poor logic." - Steve Shaw

46. "Working chest, delts, tris, and biceps works approximately 10% of your
overall lean body mass. Working hard on deadlifts (bent legged, trap Bar, or
sumo) or squatting (not necessarily at the same time) works more like 70% of
your musculature at once and sends a strong message to your body to get
better at growing now!" - Wesley Silveira

47. "Once you can squat with 180 kilograms, your arms and shoulders will
come along much more receptively...If you want big arms and shoulders, your
first priority is to be sure that your leg/hip/back structure is growing and
becoming powerful" - Stuart McRobert

48. "Don't ever believe you have nothing to lose. There's always something to
be lost when you change something or try something new. Nothing is ever
free. Not even experience." - Paul Carter

49. "Not only are squats not bad for the knees, every legitimate research
study on this subject has shown that squats improve knee stability and
therefore help reduce the risk of injuries." - Charles Poliquin

50. "You are right to be wary. There is much bullshit. Be wary of me too,
because I may be wrong. Make up your own mind after you evaluate all the
evidence and the logic." - Mark Rippetoe

51. "I would like to be the first man in the gym business to throw out my scale.
If you don’t like what you see in the mirror, what difference does it make what
the scale says?" - Vince Gironda

52. "If you're training hard and heavy with the goal of lifting something
awesome, something is always going to hurt. Whether it's your wrists, elbows,
knees, hamstring, or even something ridiculous like a serratus muscle, one
bodypart or another is always going to be giving you some bullshit. The elite
athletes train in spite of or around those injuries. Sometimes they get worse,
sometimes they get better, and sometimes they just get supplanted by another
recalcitrant bodypart. Any way you cut it, something's always going to be
bothering you. Suck it the **** up and keep going." - Jamie Lewis
53. “Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you
should have accomplished with your ability.” - John Wooden

54. "Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his
goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude." -
Thomas Jefferson

55. "Stimulate don't Annihilate." - Lee Haney

56. "The internal processes of muscle growth are seriously complicated,

people devote their lives to it, but the external processes that kick it off, the
things in your control can be distilled down to a few principles: Get stronger in
the right rep ranges, eat appropriately, commit to the program and consistently
work hard at it." - Daniel Roberts

57. "There are no shortcuts. The fact that a shortcut is important to you
means that you are a pussy." - Mark Rippetoe

58. "I believe you should train with the program you believe in. I'm out of the
"justify my program" business; follow the path that will lead you to glorious
times, to quote Ramesses." - Jim Wendler

59. "After being taught sets and reps and working at it for a length of time you
can't paint by numbers anymore. It must come from within. Any artist has an
emotional contact with their work. A true bodybuilder doesn't just build muscle
he creates muscle. You can't be a robot." - Tom Platz

60. "Anyone under 200 pounds is a woman." - Matt Rhodes

61. "Remember - If you want to beat the man, you've gotta out-eat the man!" -
JM Blakely

62. "That's the classic nature of people, though. We'll skip the basics and get
pissed when the sexy stuff doesn't work." - Martin Rooney
63. “People laugh and call me lazy, while they twit around in their three-hour
workout making zero progress. Sometimes, instead of what you do in the
weight room, it’s what you don’t do that will lead to success.” - Jim Wendler

64. "Well, I am a great believer in supercompensation. Short term overtraining

leads to long-term success. I can hear the complaints about injuries, but, in
truth, not too many of us suffer injuries that lead to surgery, according to those
studies in the 1950′s. In fact, if you are not a druggie and have some common
sense, I think you can afford to train harder than you think." - Dan John

65. “I don’t eat for taste, I eat for function.” - Jay Cutler

66. "If you think lifting weights is dangerous, try being weak. Being weak is
dangerous." - Bret Contreras

67. "And what I'm telling you now is not for you to go out and try the same
ways I try, or not to even try my technique. Just put it to your personality, put it
to yourself, and you develop your workout. Cause those books and things,
those are other people's gimmicks and hypes. Build your own gimmick and
hype, and that'll make you a better powerlifter. Not just doin' it like James does
it, cause if you try to fly off the building like superman you'll be out there in the
middle of the street." - James Henderson

68. "You get one life. Live an interesting life. Do interesting things. Lifting is
not that interesting in the grand scheme of things. If you have a chance to go
somewhere you've never been, and it's a once in a lifetime thing and you turn
it down because you don't want to miss lifting for that week, you are a F'n
moron and should have your ass kicked 6 ways till Sunday. Lifting will always
be there. Don't miss out on the interesting things in life for some iron on the
bar." - Paul Carter
69. "Why so-called compound movements? Before I actually knew anything
about proper training (and this is not to imply that I know even a fraction of
what there is to know now), I realized that there was something, an indefinable
something, that wasn't "right" about a number of bodybuilders who trained in
the gym where I also trained. (This is not to be misconstrued as a criticism of
all bodybuilders. Many have a great deal of athletic ability and fine, athletic-
appearing physiques.) One such man was an advanced trainee (in the sense
that he had been training a number of years and had won a number of local
physique titles). However, he was missing a certain athletic quality, a
harmonious look. My brother put the finger on it when he observed, "He looks
like a bunch of bodyparts pasted together. He's all there, big and all, but the
total picture looks awkward-no grace, no glow, no..." The point had been
made." - Dr. Ken Leistner

70. "It is harder to be a lifter than a bodybuilder...lifting is purely masculine

whereas bodybuilding entails feminine traits. Bodybuilding reminds me of a
woman getting ready to go somewhere. Can you tell me that greasing your
body up and posing in front of a mirror is masculine? A bodybuilder puts
strength secondary to his physique, whereas the lifter puts strength foremost
because it is more masculine to do so." - Doug Hepburn

71. "Trust me, if you do an honest 20 rep program, at some point Jesus will
talk to you. On the last day of the program, he asked if he could work in." -
Mark Rippetoe

72. "Always remember this...there is only ONE recipe for strength. A secret
recipe that was handed down from Sandow to John Grimek to Paul Anderson
to Vasily Alexeev to Bill Kazmaier to me. Now I’m giving YOU that magical
recipe…hard work plus proper nutrition plus time equals strong." - Steve
Pulcinella

73. "Back in the 1970s, I ate a high-protein diet to get bigger and stronger. As
a senior at Utah State, I weighed 218 pounds with eight percent body fat, and
threw the discus over 190 feet. Then I got some advice from the people at the
Olympic Training Center. I needed carbs, they advised, and lots of them. They
pointed to studies done on the American distance runners. Being an idiot, I
took the advice to eat like emaciated, over-trained sub-performers. It took
years of high carbohydrate grazing to learn the evils of this advice." - Dan
John

74. "That's a good weight...for a small woman" - Dorian Yates

75. "Did you ever notice those who criticize the strong or the elite are usually
weaker or less successful than those they pass judgment on. And those who
are strong or elite in their respective sports rarely condemn those who are not
as strong or as successful as they are." - Louie Simmons

76. "It's a rare individual who lets themselves be steered by what they feel is
their own passion." - Dave Tate

77. "I never think about losing." - Lou Ferrigno

78. "In my estimation; which by the way comes from 32 years of training and
over 20 years of hands-on coaching, 99% of the weight trainees of the world
have 'real lives'. By 'real lives' I mean they have real life responsibilities / loves
such as family, career, academic, spiritual, and social to name a few. The flip
side of this is that most of the training information that these 99% use, comes
from trainees who don't have real lives - their only responsibility (or choice
thereof) is to train, eat, sleep, and more than likely take steroids. Even some
of the rare well-intentioned writers gleam most of their training info from these
trainees. These programs or even toned-down derivatives of these programs
will not work (or work very well) for you. Be honest. If you have been trying to
make a program work for you that is based on the information derived from
the 1% - is it really getting you to where you want to be? I know it isn't." - John
Christy

79. "Far too many bodybuilders spend too much time exercising the smaller
muscle groups such as the biceps at the expense of the larger muscle groups
such as the thighs, and then they wonder why it is that they never make gains
in overall size and strength." - Reg Park

80. "At the end of the day it's not a weight contest, it's a visual contest. And it
doesn't matter what you say you weigh, if you don't look that big then you
don't look that big." - Dorian Yates
81. “The problem with many hypertrophy-based programs is that they leave
out the strength component. You might get bigger as a result of the program,
but if you don’t get any stronger you’re still a chump in my book. That’s right, I
don’t care how big you are, if you aren’t strong you’re a sham. Having big
muscles and no strength is the training equivalent of wearing a strap-on. All
show and no go. End of story.” - Jim Wendler

82. “They can crack jokes. They can sit back and analyze and criticize and
make all the fun they want. But I’m living my life, I’m doing it. What are you
doing?” - Kai Greene

83. "Most powerlifters share some common defects, as a whole for whatever
reason, LOVE to punish, beat and torture ourselves beyond the limits of mind
and body. It is our spirit that prevails. This defect of intelligence and sensibility
pushes us onto the next level, makes us better and stronger. We all have lifted
sick and badly hurt,, When this subject comes up with normal people and
other meatheads, we all have the prideful smile when we talk about lifting with
a 100 degree temperature or a torn groin. Thank God that therapy doesn't
work on us." - Kirk Karwoski

84. “You’ve got to block out all distractions when you train. Your focus has to
be 100% into the rep. You’ve got to get into a zone. You know you’re in the
zone when guys in the gym look you in the eye and then quickly turn away
’cause they see the fire. You’ve got to be all business.” - Mike Matarazzo

85. "On the Internet, everyone squats. In real life, the squat rack is always
empty. You figure out what this means." - Steve Shaw

86. "When I get closer to a show and have to back off from training and
cardio, I use sex as an aid to help me burn calories. Look at it this way: The
risk of getting injured is zero to none." - J.J. Marsh

87. "I don't feel sorry for those who lack the discipline to eat more." - JM
Blakely
88. ”You must understand that the workout does not actually produce
muscular growth. The workout is merely a trigger that sets the body’s growth
mechanism into motion. It is the body itself, of course, that produces growth;
but it does so only during a sufficient rest period.” - Mike Mentzer

89. "When they get a 50-inch waist and a gorilla butt, it's ugly looking - and I
think bodybuilding has become ugly looking." - Joe Gold

90. “I always leave the heavy ones for meets. They don’t mean shit in the gym
and I’ll end up overtraining. That’s what I used to do when I was younger, but I
could get away with it then. Overtraining is really common in powerlifting, just
like bodybuilding.” - Ed Coan

91. "Your body, despite the science that says "X number of reps is better for
this, Y for that" will get stronger if it is overloaded." Dr. Ken Leistner

92. "NOT training everyday leads to more injuries! If you train everyday then
your entire body is fatigued. Muscles, tendons, cartilage, ligaments, etc. When
you train every other day, then the muscles and avascular tissues don't
recover at the same pace. What happens is the muscles become fresh and
recover but all the connective tissue is NOT. When the additional stress put on
these weakened tissues (that never really got a chance to recover) by fresh
muscles equals injury. Lifting everyday keeps everything in a state that is
equal and consistent within the system. A balance or harmony within. The
fatigued muscles can't contract enough to harm the other tissues. The weak
link moves from body part to body part, and in a sense is not letting the other
parts max so that's when they are resting!" - John Broz

93. “I’ve made many good friends in bodybuilding, though there are few I’d
trust to oil my back.” - Lee Labrada

94. "The longer I train, the less and less shit I do. The less shit I do, the
stronger I get. The more I emphasize recovery, the stronger I get." - Paul
Carter

95. “Arguing about strength training theory is stupid, the reason I came up
with 5/3/1 was that I wanted a program that eliminated stupid thoughts from
my head and just let me go into the weight room and get shit done. I’ve been
training for 20 years, and this is what I’ve learned.” - Jim Wendler
96. "Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your
strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is
strength." - Arnold Schwarzenegger

97. "When I go out there onstage, I want to be more than just a blocky guy
who waddles onto the posing platform. I want the girls to feel something." -
Tom Platz

98. "If your family was captured and you were told you needed to put 100
pounds onto your max squat within two months or your family would be
executed, would you squat once per week? Something tells me that you'd
start squatting every day." - John Broz

99. “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” -
Ayn Rand

100. "You can work technique all you want at 30 and 40 percent of your one-
rep max using multiple sets and low reps, but technique is still going to be
influenced by what's on the bar. You may look good at 50 percent but 80
percent may look like shit." - Dave Tate

101. "I also agree with you about the whole paralysis by analysis thing. Yes,
you have to be smart in your training, and yes, you have to think it through
and plan it -- but you also have to chalk your hands, grab the bar and lift it.
That's where so many people go wrong." - Brooks Kubik