Dear Sirs,

I think many readers would be interested in these thoughts of mine about bodybuilding.

To begin with, I feel that rules are made to be challenged, questioned, changed or completely broken.

There is no 'absolute' right way - or wrong way - to work out! Too many bodybuilders, unquestioningly, slave away year in and year out , with exercises and concepts they never bother to analyze or explain. They don't even seem to notice that they are not getting results! They seem to think that some morning they will wake up, look into the mirror, and Lo! They will have attained the body-beautiful!

I, personally, get bored and disgusted when I see no results. So, I change my thinking and try to look at the concept obliquely and see if I have overlooked, or did not see, a side of the problem that
I had not seen before.

In short, I try things that are not logical to me by actually doing the thing physically. In doing it physically, I sometimes find a logic that I could not have ever seen unless I experienced
the thing physically.

When I experiment with a new exercise I don't do it for one week - or two - or three - and expect to feel or see any difference ... I give it a chance and let it become a habit pattern. In short, I give it nine months. Experience has shown me that any less than nine months does not let me pass through all the phases that are necessary to finally formulate an opinion. Performed longer than nine months the exercise becomes confusing and boring. If the new concept, or exercise, is of any value it will be born in nine months.

What I am trying to be is flexible in my thinking, and also give new concepts a fair and working chance. My penchant is to get away from the usual and experiment with the unusual.

I feel that I have no magical secrets other than an open-minded philosophy, or formula of thinking, that works with any problem or question.

If the old, worn patterns do not work ... throw them out! If they are partially successful, use your intuition and intelligence to improve on them and keep creating. The old cliche about necessity being the mother of invention applies just as much to bodybuilding as to anything else.

Some of the old routines and exercise combinations should be dead and buried --- Only those who still promote them haven't bothered to try anything new themselves.

What could be more creative than changing, developing, renewing and altering your body?

Yours very sincerely,
Vince Gironda,
California.

(Musclemag Volumne 2 issue 1)