Agreed. by the looks of Paul, evidence is that you don’t even need to eat!
1 Like
some of the pics of Paul with the tiny arms and tank tops were pretty cringeworty…but it looks like for some brief period he was actually working out lol
super classic ectomorph
To be fair, he’s surprisingly tall, which might make him look thinner than he is.
I met him and Billy Sheehan after a Mr. Big show in the early 90’s. Based on photos at the time, I assumed Billy was really tall and Paul wasn’t. When I met them, it was the opposite.
This is a VERY interesting topic to me personally… I’ve been a Strength and conditioning coach for the last ~12 years. And have competed at the national level in powerlifting. I started playing guitar when I was 18 since I didn’t like my roommates… Interestingly enough, MANY of the elite level athletes (not just average or slightly above average athletes) were involved in some sort of musical endeavor at some point during their development. I think there is a direct correlation between early music and athletic correlation but don’t have any specific data.
That being said being the nerd that I am in both strength and conditioning and guitar, I have noticed that the more consistent I am in training, the more relaxed and focused I feel practicing guitar. Since the 3 phases of lifting weights take place in different parts of the brain, there has to be some crossover. Whether it is in technical/mechanical processing or the ability to of the nervous system to better coordinate global/fine motor skills, there is definitely some carryover. Granted, I wouldn’t recommend anyone putting themselves through the stupidity that I did, but there seems to be benefit to training and its carryover to practice.
I have noticed that when/if I am deadlifting heavy, I have noticed it takes me longer to warm up my fingers when playing guitar. I also think there is a correlation between complex movements in the weight room and coordinative (is that a word?!) ability completing fine motor tasks. Again, no data on this just my empirical observation with myself and some of the high level athletes I have been blessed to interact with.
I do think that it takes more focus to stay relaxed playing guitar when you are lifting heavy as I can remember playing guitar when I was competing regularly and gripping the guitar like I was trying to choke it… If anyone is super interested in this, I’d be happy to try to sift through the mountains of “stuff” I have and see if I can come up with anything. I’ve got a bunch of really old translated russian manuals from the 60’s and 70’s. What I can say is that Americans have sport training and physical preparation pretty wrong! Hopefully someone got some use out of these ramblings…
3 Likes
haha, ive got manuals from Medvedev, verkoshansky, Roman, and the one that was sort of hard to get (maybe not now though) the big manual from Vorobyev. Good stuff, though I havent lifted regularly for several years
Interesting topic that I’m late to - showed up in my forum summary email. I was an avid Crossfitter for the past 6 or 7 years - and when I decided to pick my guitar back up again a bit over a year ago - I was able to correlate a negative impact to my guitar playing. Crossfit can be really grip intensive - I mean - really grip intensive. I found that I could feel impact from that for several days. Just a slow down and impact to overall dexterity. Chatted about it with another guy at the gym who is a classical guitarist and he said he noticed the same thing. I’ve been out for several months now - longest break ever but my old man back has about had enough- unfortunately 
Why not? Was it negatively impacting your guitar playing?
work etc and a bad case of pfl (pure freaking laziness). Been back at it a bit for about 5 weeks though. Doubt ill ever be a serious lifter again though. Not enough time or focus
I quit because of chronic tendonitis in my front and medial deltoids. I would quit for months at a time, or even a year to heal, and when I began again I’d feel fine for 4 to 6 weeks. I’d start very slowly but as soon as I got past about 6 weeks, it always came back!
1 Like
yeah my delts are bothering me now, hope it passes