Words of Wisdom from a Natural Bodybuilding Legend Martin Daniels

"This is what a lot of younger generations are missing..." - MD

Kenny: …I remember you saying “I could deadlift 500 pounds, but I'm not a powerlifter, I'm not a weightlifter, I'm going in the gym with a purpose to build muscle and powerlifting and building muscle are two different things.”

Martin: That’s right, a lot of guys go in the gym - and where I train specifically it looks like a powerlifting gym - especially the younger guys, and they think it's impressive to see. You can see the physiques and how they look, it's not a body that will look impressive to the eye. I'm thinking how someone looks on stage, versus pretty much a block straight up and down, which is nothing special to look at it in my opinion, but some of these guys can move some incredible weight, and that is impressive, but once you leave that gym the mindset is “do you even lift bro?” because they don’t leave the same visual impression that a bodybuilder would from a physique standpoint. I talked to a couple guys that come in the gym and they tell me “yo, we thought that you would be lifting X amount of weight” I'm like “I can, but why would I want to? I'm not here to impress you, I’m into bodybuilding so my avenue is this - bodybuilding - I could care less about what you guys are doing over there, but make no mistake I can go over there and work out with you guys and probably go pound for pound, but I have no need for that.

Also I’m 50 years old, the last thing I wanna do is get injured or have joint pain, so trying to prove something to you guys is of no interest to me. I've been there done that and so now it's all about contraction, squeeze, control, time under tension and that's everything to me now, and that's also what a lot of younger generations are missing, they want to go in the gym and do exercises that only work the “show muscles” i.e. the things they can see when they look in the mirror, that's all they wanna work, versus what I'm saying which is, you need to be working everything so that you have a complete physique, that includes the back muscles, hamstrings, calves. These young guys don’t train any back unless they see somebody doing it, and then they’re like “wait a minute, I need to hit traps”. For example when I do shrugs - nobody does shrugs anymore - but when I go in and start hitting a set of shrugs, and they see my traps, then all of a sudden it becomes Trap Nation, everybody knows everything and and everyone is hitting shoulder shrugs.

Kenny: Yes, that is facts. Ha! Can you give a sample of what your training looks like?