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I took someone to the gym and made them do bench presses. Only bench presses. Because I've been doing this for ages I'm good at form and technique, so I made sure this person did it the right way with the right form and all.

Because it was their first time I knew their muscles would feel sore the next day. So the next day I asked them if they felt sore, they said yes and started showing me the muscles that were sore. To my surprise their forearms were sore too, their brachioradialis.

I was so surprised because bench presses were not supposed to work the brachioradialis to any good extent, so how come it worked this person's brachioradialis to the extent they were sore?

I thought about this and compared it to other experiences and occurrences I've had in the past and an idea brewing in my head got so much corroboration. Enough to call it a discovery. And it is this: some people are so special and many of the rules do not apply to them or apply to them in totally unexpected and different ways.

In the case of this person, it seems the bench press, which is supposed to work mainly on their chest and triceps, mainly works their brachioradialis instead. They also felt sore in their triceps but not their chest. Also it is not certain it would really build their brachioradialis because being sore is not all the evidence required, but then it is a very big indication.

But still some people really aren't subject to some of the generally established rules. This also got me thinking about how I'm a good example of how the rules are different for some people. In my case I've never worked my trapezius but I have quite big traps that gets gym bros asking me how I did it. Turns out almost every exercise I do for the upper body recruits my traps somehow.

Secondly I just recently came to the conclusion that nothing builds my triceps like bench presses. All my favourite tricep focused workouts give me the pump and all but I don't see the results like I do when I take bench presses seriously. This is kind of unusual because tricep focused workouts are supposed to be the main blasters of triceps not bench presses that works a lot of other muscles alongside triceps.

Even more, this bodybuilder Mike Mentzer who was on the stage in the 70s and thereabouts had a lot of bodybuilding principles that were against all people knew back then and against what the science says in this modern era.

Principles like you don't need protein, you don't need many sets, and you need so much rest days. Less than 2 hours a week or so. No matter how much these are against what the science says the fact remains that this guy built a great physique (supposedly with these principles). Great enough to win so many amateur and professional titles.
This guy:

Source

Did the rules not apply to him or what? Could it be the steroids? Or just genes?

Next, research shows that some people would never grow muscles no matter they do. They had people workout and eat right but after weeks some didn't grow a single inch of muscle, some people even lost the muscles they had. This just tells you the general rules don't apply to everybody.

But then it is possible if you invert the rules positive results might come. Like give them less workouts and what you call eating right which has to do with eating good protein might turn out to do worse than a diet of mainly carbs and fat or something.

The bottom line is that the rules don't work the same for everyone, and the best advice is find what works for you, chances are there's something out there that gives you undue advantage, and it might be against all the known mainstream principles/norms.

The End

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