Arms & Shoulders Above the Rest
By Rick Wayne
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
Rick Wayne
Rick Wayne is a cretinous mass who's dissected a cadaver, climbed the Great Wall, jumped from an airplane, designed sampling systems, swam naked in the Mediterranean, and felt the blast of a terrorist's bomb, although not in that order. When he's not vomiting words, he's planning his next adventure. He can be found at RickWayne.com.
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Reviews for Arms & Shoulders Above the Rest
4 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Was an ok book. Took way too long to get into anything of significance. Not sure why he gave a portion dedicated to gyms he recommends. The meat and potatoes of this book is just ok in comparison to others. The program is very very basic though he offers some interesting tips on some exercises. Also, upright rows are know for creating a pinch point in the shoulder, not sure how anyone can honestly recommend this. Not to mention he suggests behind the neck presses, which by his own admission, caused a serious injury for him and is also widely known to cause impingement because it puts the shoulders in a compromised, weak position.
Book preview
Arms & Shoulders Above the Rest - Rick Wayne
Stuff
Introduction
‘Tis education forms the common mind,
Just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.
Alexander Pope might have made one hell of a bodybuilding instructor. Certainly he might have spared a generation of bodybuilders a heap of trouble. For it is very much a fact that stepping out on the right foot is the most important move a bodybuilder will ever make.
You’d be surprised by the number of physique men, champions, let me tell you, who suffer horribly with chronic lower back problems and aching necks—not to mention shattered joints and busted tendons—precisely because at the start of their careers they were misguided by an untutored instructor. That or they followed a written course bearing the name of some Mr. America or Mr. Universe winner. Which brings us into another murky swampland.
Attracted by the scent of the fast buck, too many champions rush to a ghost writer who knows absolutely nothing about bodybuilding. The result is a course that bears no resemblance whatever to the method of training our champion employed on his way to winning his title. More often than not the course he advocates and from which he earns a very good living totals up to a few pictures with succinct captions. You see, the services of a ghost writer don’t come cheaply. In most cases our Mr. America can afford no more than fifteen or twenty pages of matter padded neatly with photographs that ostensibly illustrate the way an exercise should be performed. But we know better from bitter experience, don’t we?
Far too often the illustrations in the above-mentioned courses do not coincide with the text. But enough of that.
An early picture. And how!
I recall buying a course when I first started out in this business. It promised to change me from a skinny runt into a he-man—in weeks! Now had that sort of promise come from a nondescript salesman I might well have laughed in his face. But no, the man who assured me he could turn me into a champion overnight was loaded with credentials. True, he never said he had himself actually won even a single title. But he knew his business anyway. That he made absolutely clear. So well did he know his stuff, he said, he had trained all the champions of the day. And just in case I thought he was exaggerating, he enclosed a pamphlet containing endorsements by a number of the champions he purported to have trained. Naturally, that was sufficient proof for me that my overseas instructor knew more than a thing or two about bodybuilding—even though he had never taken a title himself. Besides, by his photo I could tell he was no chicken. Had he chosen so to do, I told myself, he could have won every contest going!
Well, having convinced me of his qualifications, it was an easy matter getting me to follow his correspondence course to the letter. If he said the deadlift was the daddy of all exercises
that was exactly what I believed. And when he pointed out that the movement should be performed with very heavy weights because the back is very thick and requires heavy movements for proper stimulation
, who was I to think twice? I did exactly as I was directed—for years.
I squatted with heavy weights. I performed trunk bends with crippling poundages. I did set after set of barbell rows (with heavy poundages, of course) and never mind that my lower back very often felt as if it had been run over by a Sherman tank, I persevered. The rewards that I had been promised by my absent instructor seemed more than worthy of my suffering.
In time I was able to quote my course from memory. I knew all about bulk movements
and definition exercises.
And if I did not look quite like the photographs in my muscle magazines, hell I convinced myself that all I needed was more time. After all, I was then only sixteen years old!
Bodybuilding stardom is not always hard work, obviously. Rick is pictured following a personal appearance in Athens, Greece.
Well, as I look back on a lifetime of successful bodybuilding I am thankful to providence that I never actually crippled myself in the process. A lot of other people were not quite as fortunate. For I came to my senses in time, dumped my course in favour of a more practical, more sensible system of training. I allowed my head to guide me. I did only what commonsense told me was good for me. Yes, and let it also be said that I experimented quite a lot.
From talking with champions like Reg Park, who lived in Leeds, England, when I first left my native Caribbean to make my home in London, from reading every bodybuilding and nutrition book I could lay my hands on, I was finally able to put together my own training programs. Needless to say, some of these concepts proved quite fruitless—and I learned from those mistakes.
Finally I would develop a physique that earned me Mr. World, Mr. America and Mr. Universe honours and a lot of admiration all over the world. I make a comfortable living writing for Muscle Builder magazine. And at no time have I suffered ill health as a result of my bodybuilding.
Here I must pause to make a point. A bodybuilding course that does not take your health into account is a course that you should immediately abandon. For it profits a man nothing at all if he gain a bunch of shiny trophies, titles—even a few thousand dollars to boot!—if at the end of it all he is a physical wreck and unable to fend for himself.
You’ve been warned!
It is a fact of life that not all of us are destined to be bodybuilding champions. A number of factors—not least of all being the bone structure you inherit from your parents, your ability to concentrate hard and long enough on training, the type of metabolism you are born with—are involved in the building of a champion. It takes a lot of sacrifice and guts. And many people don’t think the end result is worth the effort. It’s a matter of choice, of course.
Then again it is also a fact that no matter what your condition at this point in time, it can be improved with sensible bodybuilding such as the system outlined here.
Here you will learn all about gaining weight