Brooks Kubik's Dinosaur Training

Book Excerpt, part two
Lost Secrets of Strength & Development
by Brooks Kubik

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: PERSISTENCE
Pages 178-182

A dinosaur's most essential attribute is a grim determination to succeed. Dinosaurs have patience. They have tenacity. They never quit. They never yield. They never give in. They always keep on going. It doesn't matter how long it takes to achieve any particular goal — a dinosaur will stay at it until he reaches the goal. It doesn't matter how many stumbling blocks lay in his path. A dinosaur understands that aches and pains, frustration, discouragement and periods of stagnation are common to all who train with weights. He doesn't enjoy them any more than does the next fellow, but he doesn't let them beat him.

YEARS OF EFFORT
What's the difference between (1) a dinosaur who squats 500 pounds and benches 400 pounds with a 3"bar, and (2) a scrawny wannabe who never handles over 150 pounds on any exercise and couldn't ROLL a 400-pound barbell if his life depended on it? In many cases, the real difference between the two men is at least ten years of hard work. That's right — TEN YEARS of hard, sweaty, agonizing, regular, consistent effort.

STUNNED SILENCE
Many people who see an advanced dinosaur are literally shocked into stunned silence. They can't comprehend how a man can build his body to the point where he squats 500 or more pounds, benches 400 with a 3"bar, curls 170 with a 2.5" bar or does a seated military press with 250 on the 3" bar. They don't understand how a man can build a 50" chest or 18" arms. They immediately start to look for a "simple" explanation for the dinosaur's power.

JUMPING TO THE WRONG EXPLANATION
One "explanation" always leaps to mind: drugs. At least half the guys who see an advanced dinosaur immediately decide the dinosaur is using steroids. "He benches 400 pounds! He has 18" arms! He MUST be doing drugs. You can't bench 400 without drugs — it's impossible. I know a guy who uses 'roids all the time and even he only handles 320! I could never do 400 pounds without drugs. No one could! You can't get big without drugs. No one can do it. It's impossible!"

Then there is the "genetics" explanation. Many men who see an advanced dinosaur will say to themselves, "He has it so easy! He's an EASY GAINER! The guy just has to look at a barbell and he gets bigger and stronger. Anyone could be as strong as him if they just had the right parents. He doesn't know anything about training. His program would never work for ME! I have bad genetics. I could never be like him!"

Then what happens? The wannabe sits back on his chrome-plated wonder machine and grinds out a "hard" set of chest flyes with 40 pounds resistance. He doesn't bother to give the dinosaur's program a try. Why should he? He KNOWS it wouldn't work for him, because (1) he doesn't take steroids, and (2) he has lousy genetics. Listen to him talking to himself: "Gotta face facts, man. You're the human equivalent of a gazelle. He's a lion. You need to train for elegant symmetry and graceful proportions. Forget about the strength thing! Size is for grizzly bears! You better pump it and shape it!"

The wannabe has fallen into an all-too-common trap: He has sold himself short because he has failed to identify the one factor that is the major difference between his own scrawny physique and that of the advanced dinosaur: TIME!

Advanced dinosaurs are not big and strong because of drugs. They are not big and strong because they are genetic marvels. They are big and strong because they have trained hard and heavy, and CONSISTENTLY, for MANY, MANY YEARS. The wannabe missed this important point because all he saw was the end result of many years of sensible, heavy training. He conveniently ignored the long years of blood, toil, tears and sweat that lay behind the end result.

There is an oft-told story about a famous artist who drew a hasty sketch on a paper napkin at a restaurant and sold it for ten thousand dollars. Someone asked him how he could justify charging thousands of dollars for a work that took only minutes to compete, and the artist responded, "Behind that picture lay twenty years of daily effort to bring my skills to where they are today. Isn't $10,000 a fair price for twenty years of effort?"

Advanced dinosaurs are like that famous old artist. Their strength, size and power are the result of many years of regular, consistent, brutally hard work. And that brings us to a very important point: the need to persevere in your training for as long as it may take to develop the size and strength that will label you as an advanced dinosaur.

PERSEVERANCE
Plenty of guys start out with a "gung ho" attitude when they begin to train with weights. They are burning with desire and bubbling over with enthusiasm. They go to the gym five or six days a week and train for two or three hours at a time. They do every exercise under the sun. They train as though their lives depended on it. They are totally, absolutely and unreservedly dedicated to their training.

Two weeks later they quit.

That's right, they QUIT. They give up. They wimp out. They trade in their barbells for a big screen tv and spend the rest of their lives watching MTV or the 24-hour-a-day sports channel. And if anyone ever asks, they are the first to say, "Yeah, I tried the weight lifting stuff but it just doesn't work unless you take lots of drugs and have the right genetics."

Do you have ay idea what the percentage of weight training dropouts is? Try something like 90% or more. That's right — by conservative estimate, 90% of the people who take up weight training GIVE IT UP in short order. That means that nine out of ten people who start a weight training program this month are going to have given it up by this time next year.

If you think about it, that's an appalling statistic. Properly performed, weight training can be of enormous benefit to almost anyone. There is no physical activity that can do so much for a man. Nothing else even approaches the results one can achieve through proper weight training. And yet, nine out of ten people who give weight training a try give it up in a mere matter of months.

Part of the blame for the 90% dropout rate lives with the idiot programs touted by today's "experts." The modern-day toner/shaper/pumper brigade has made it almost impossible for beginners to obtain sensible, productive training advice. As a result, most people who train with weights do it WRONG! They hurt themselves, they overtrain, they get zero in the way of results and they naturally decide that weight training just doesn't work. So they quit.

But another reason for the high dropout rate is a simple lack of perseverance on the part of almost everyone who trains with weights. People quit training because they lack the tenacity to nail themselves to the Iron Game on a long-term basis. They want immediate results — instant success — overnight gains. If it doesn't happen immediately, they are not interested. They don't want to think of training as a long-term proposition, they want to think of it as a short-term fix.

If you have a short-term attitude, you will never achieve long-term success.

One of the strongest men of all time, George Hackenschmidt, was right on the mark when he noted, "There are only two principal means of acquiring strength — exercise and perseverance."

Dinosaurs see training as a LIFE-LONG commitment. Forget about the overnight transformations. Forget about the 30-day wonder programs. We're talking about years. Decades. Lifetimes. And that means we are talking about a training approach that will only work for men who have a supreme degree of tenacity and perseverance, men who will not give up when the going gets tough and who will not be turned aside no matter what.

HOW TO DEVELOP PERSEVERANCE AND TENACITY
How do you develop the degree of perseverance it takes to stick to your training year in and year out for the rest of your life? Well, if you have made it this far through this book, you obviously have pretty intense interest in serious training. That's good. If you lacked a deep-rooted interest in developing superhuman strength and barbaric power, you would never last very long on dinosaur training.

SHORT TERM GOALS
The next thing you need to do is focus on the journey rather than the destination. Do this in two ways. First of all, take all of your long-term goals and break them down into a serious of short-term goals. For example, if your long-term goal is to bench press 400 pounds and you currently are handling 135 pounds, set 150 pounds as your immediate short-term goal. After you reach 150 pounds, shoot for 185 pounds. When you reach 185 pounds, set a new short-term goal: 200 pounds. Then go to 225 pounds... 250 pounds... 275 pounds... 300 pounds... 315 pounds... and so on.

Tie your goals to the plates you use: on a Olympic barbell that uses pounds instead of kilos, the big plates are 45 pounds each and the bar is 45 pounds, so your initial dance with the big plates will see you using 135 pounds. Adding a 25-pound plate to each side is roughly halfway to a second 45-pound plate on each side — hence the goal of 185 pounds. The next major goals is 225 pounds — the bar plus TWO 45-pound plates on each side. And so on.

ENJOY YOUR TRAINING
The second way to develop perseverance is to enjoy your training. I'm deadly serious about that. If you approach your training as some sort of hated chore that you have to force yourself to complete you are never going to be able to stick to it long enough to develop a really significant level of size and strength. You have to learn to love the hard work, the effort, the pain, the sweat, the forced breathing, the pounding in your temples, the churning sensation in the pit of your stomach and the aching, burning flames of agony in your muscles. If you don't learn to love the feel of a hard, heavy workout you will never make it to the level of an advanced dinosaur.

Most people focus solely on the end result of their training. That's a mistake. The journey is much more important than the destination. You have to enjoy the journey. If you don't enjoy your training — really enjoy it — then you will never be able to stick with it.

For a dinosaur, it is perfectly natural to enjoy your training. The harder and more demanding a session is, the more enjoyable it is — at least, if you are a dinosaur. Dinosaurs have a deep-rooted, almost primordial NEED to test their strength against heavy weights and to do so regularly. A dinosaur's training session is the high point of his day. It is the time when he feels most alive. The training session allows him to express his true self — the self he has to cover up in order to live in the everyday world and its myriad of castes, codes and conformity. During a workout the dinosaur is free to be as physical and animalistic as he wishes. He can be barbaric — brutal — primitive — atavistic. He can challenge the iron, grapple with it, do battle, and either live or die. The part of him that never finds expression in the ordinary course of an everyday existence may be unleashed in full force when he attacks the iron.

Those of you who know that I am talking about will recognize immediately the joy of being supremely alive when you battle with a heavy barbell. The feeling cannot be explained to those who have not experienced it. If what I am describing strikes any sort of responsive cord, then you are one of us — one of the dinosaurs. If it seems like meaningless mumbo-jumbo, go to the gym, train hard, train consistently and try to sense what the dinosaurs feel. Once you realize what heavy training can add to your life you will be one with the iron for the rest of your days. The very idea of EVER giving up on your training will be absurd — on a par with the idea of giving up on breathing. When you feel THAT way about your training, consistency, perseverance and tenacity become second nature... and at that point your ultimate success is a foregone conclusion.

- - -
From Dinosaur Training
Pages 178-182
Copyright 1996 by Brooks D. Kubik

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