Source: 30 year old guy. Wife competes and I just do it as a hobby since I don't feel the need to put on a speedo and prance around on stage so people can tell me how good I look. No good adult male influence in my life growing up. Grew up poor, worked hard, and now I'm doing pretty well for myself. Found about Rich 3-4 years ago and honestly he's had a pretty significant impact on my daily life. I've been mulling this over for the past couple days and wanted to write it all out for myself just to kind of make my feelings tangible. Kind of therapeutic you know? Came out pretty good even if I wrote it in a few chunks so I figured I'd toss it up here if anyone wants to reflect, chat, or add anything they may have learned from Rich. I know it doesn't fit the specifics of the posting rules so if mods or the community want it taken down - not going to hurt my feelings. tl;dr - I learned a lot about how to be a good bodybuilder, be a good person, and be successful from Rich.
On life:
Rich showed us through his own experiences that it is important to pursue goals that are important to you. "Do whatever it takes" and "One day you may" have become meme status but if you honestly think about it they're pretty solid messages. Be patient but keep working toward your goal. The same method could be said as a parallel to bodybuilding. We all know of Rich's past bodybuilding days where he did whatever it took and that culminated in his winning the Mr California - not the Olympia but still better than anyone here will achieve. But we're more familiar with the Rich Piana of the past few years. An older and arguably wiser Rich. He did whatever it took and accomplished his goals back then and speaks back on them not with regret but with a critical eye in that maybe they weren't that important. Did he need to take it as far as he did...did his goals need to be what they were...should he have put more thought into what was actually important? We see this in a lot of old folks too. Thinking back about how they spent their youth grinding and wasted a bunch of time that they should have spent just enjoying life. Some of this does come as kind of a masked hindsight though. When you're young and grinding it is because you have to or at least perceive that you have to. When you're old and you've got savings and your house paid for or whatever else it is easy to look back and say that you should have enjoyed your time more. We saw Rich having his midnight food run (right babe?) and Ben and Jerrys because that's what he enjoyed. The hard work Rich put in during his younger years enabled him to relax a bit and enjoy life. Seeing someone living a life not too different than my own coming to this conclusion - I think I could learn from that. I came from nothing and am looking at an early retirement if everything goes as planned. I'm not arrogant enough that I'd say I'm a 100% self-made man but it hasn't been without a lot of hard work and I do frequently have family and friends question if maybe I should slow down a little bit. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel though and like Rich I want to get to the point that I can just enjoy my days. But I should probably honestly make sure I figure out how to do that today as well. Death comes for us all and often unexpectedly. I should put in the work but I shouldn't neglect the fun and enjoyment. We only get one life and we should make the most of it by doing whatever it takes and to enjoy the things we can today with the idea of 'one day we may' realize the ultimate fruits of our labor.
On Bodybuilding:
Tough sport and requires huge sacrifice. Let's face it - the vast majority of us are doing it just for the beach body. A smaller number of us are doing it to get huge and freaky. An even smaller number of us are doing it to compete. Rich jumped right in at #3 - growing up in a bodybuilding family it was what he wanted to do from a young age. This is tough because of similarities with other sports. If you want to be good at football you need to be killing it in high school. PEDs may play a part in that even at that age. But we don't normally consider the long term effects or criticize those that choose to use. Back to bodybuilding we have a solid split between natural and enhanced bodybuilders with the latter being the ones more typically referenced with the sport. I'm going to exclude natural bodybuilders in this case because at the top level - let's be real - all are using. If you want to be competitive you can't start late and you can't avoid what the competition is doing. This is the recipe for young guys getting into PEDs. It is a damn tough topic and I would really like to have heard Rich's thoughts about Dallas. On one hand I've followed Dallas for a few years as many of us have and knew full well that he was using PEDs in his football days and stepped it up right when he got out of school and started bodybuilding. That puts him in his late teens...doing big boy drugs to get huge. And damn he did it right - he really was the future and maybe the next Yates. But look what happened...controversy aside - if it really was an insulin faint + food...man it is clear as day how kids can be taken advantage of by the media, coaches, and by themselves. This opens a whole can of worms...what is the 'right' way to do the drugs it takes to get huge? Is there a 'right' way? I've gotten away from Rich to establish some context to his common advice. If you want to be a competitive bodybuilder you're going to have to do the drugs. If you are not going to be a competitive bodybuilder it just doesn't make sense to do the drugs. This was somewhat hypocritical as he continued his use and no plans to compete...and as such highlights the grey area. The middle group I mentioned before that wants to get huge but no competition. I like Rich's advice here though that it really doesn't make sense for the vast majority of us that want the beach body. The blanket advice should be to not do the drugs. Then if someone gets into that grey area of wanting to get big...hopefully they know enough about stuff at that point drugs will make sense but not pro level huge cycles/doses. There is no reason to get into that risky territory unless you're making a career out of it.
On dicks hanging below the balls:
Seriously though. Look through the comments and you'll see so many that reference how small of dicks bodybuilders have and the implications of our 'manhood.' Man I still really don't know what to think about this other than it isn't how big my body is, how big my dick is, how small my balls are...none of that that makes me who I am. Who cares how small the balls are? And to that effect why does the size of anything of my body matter to anybody that knows me or doesn't know me? Rich was a living cartoon character and whether he was full of synthol, PMMA, or all natural...those of us that followed him looked beyond his physique because we were drawn to him as a person. He had similar interests as us and could talk about his experiences and thoughts. That's what we liked about him. As goofy as his body was - he was relatable and a decent role model. The size of his balls had no significance. It was what was on the inside that counts. Not saying we should be friends with the hambeast that sits in the cube next to ours but we shouldn't be so high and mighty that we're a better person than them just because of their body. And the other way around too of course but we can only control ourselves.
On nutrition:
Real FOOD goddammit!!! This was pretty huge for me. Not that I was eating a bunch of garbage and getting my nutrition from sugar and food substitutes but it did encourage me to go check out what other successful folks are eating. Turns out tons of pros post their diet all over youtube, instagram, and other places and go figure - it is mostly real food. Not Piana's supplement but meat, veg, carb sources from potato or pasta or rice. I've never been an IIFYM kind of guy but this really nailed down for me that I should focus on getting my nutrition from sources of actual food. I won't get into the discussion of clean vs non-clean or paleo vs non-paleo other than these are just schemes for people who don't know anything about food to help them make good decisions. But when it is bulk time I need to be simply adding more rice to my chicken and rice meal - not slamming a pack of poptarts pre-workout. But what about the daily Ben and Jerry's? Doesn't even count, right babe? Real talk - Rich had weight to lose and when he was trying to drop it he cut the B&Js if I remember right. As a guy in his 40's he was less focused on dialing in the details of his physique and more focused on enjoying what he enjoyed. That meant a pint (or more lol) of B&Js and we saw consistency in his physique. He would have no doubt had a better physique if he dropped the ice cream, pizza, burgers, etc but this loops back to the section about living life and finding balance. This was why it "didn't even count" - because it was outside of his mealplan but a consistency. For those of us that are aspiring competitors I'm convinced that a diet of all real food is the way to go. For those of us living life and doing this as a hobby we'll be best served by having a tight diet but we've got some lifestyle wiggle room.
On fashion:
Ok so I didn't learn too much here ;)
Misc:
Something that sticks with me is that video where prophetmuscle approaches Rich and tries to get him to fight. We know Rich is somewhat a fan of combat sports but the way he dealt with the whole situation was so great. With honesty and real-talk. He explained that he's just a gym rat and doesn't want to go getting in fights with guys. Many of us would look at that as a chance to teach this guy a damn lesson. But Rich just smiled, chatted with him, ended up giving him a friendly handshake too but maybe I'm remembering that part wrong. On the subject of throwing hands - the Genova incident. The video was clear they were just playing and Rich knocked him pretty good but if you've ever...idk 'played around' isn't the right way to say it but if you've ever play fought even in a friendly way sometimes it can get a little rough. Like the classic example of a bigger guy grabbing a smaller guy and rubbing his head really roughly. It isn't meant to be mean. IDK - I don't know the psychology behind it but I've been in that situation and it tends to foster closeness. Besides - once Rich was made aware that it offended Genova I thought he did the graceful thing by apologizing and flying him out to workout and make a couple videos together.
The racist rant incident. I'll be honest I just kind of glazed over the whole thing but it was something we all can learn from. Sometimes it is damn hard to keep a cool head but you never know when something is going to come back and bite you in the ass.
The subject of love...man this was tough. I don't really know the lesson learned here other than to keep your wits about you even in the case of blind love. I remember when he announced they were getting married at the Olympia and thinking it sounded like the wrong move even back then. We all saw it from the start and you know he got advice from close friends about it.
Business and making money - going into business for yourself vs working for the man. This is so outside of bodybuilding that it is really an interesting thing that he got into in his vlogs sometimes. It is a huge part of our lives too though and encouraged me to look more into making my money work for me. Starting clothing lines isn't for all of us but figuring out ways to achieve passive revenue can pretty easily make a huge difference. I'd never considered trying to make significant income outside of my normal paycheck but some of the things Rich talked about got me thinking more about it. I've got some irons in the fire that will make or break the opportunity for me to start up some revenue streams but it is something that is on the table that may not have been a consideration before.
Legacy. Shit dude this gets my heart up into my throat. Rich touched so many people's lives including my own even though most of us never met him. He left a huge impact and really seemed like one of a kind. Everything of his on the internet will be there forever. He went out on top of his world - he really was the king. IDK man I don't really have any more words. I feel like my life has been made better thanks to 'knowing' Rich Piana. I'm always going to call these single arm tricep press downs "Piana P-Downs" in my workout notebook. Every time I make a shake I'll yell SHAKETIME GODDAMMIT. But even more than that I'm going to take the stuff Rich taught and keep living it every day. I'm going to work hard. I'm going to be that positive person. I'm going to set goals and meet them. I've followed Rich for years and never thought I'd honestly be cheesy enough to say it...but I'm going to be a 5%'er.
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