Yes, natural foundation. Something not built with light fluff workouts.
I know what you mean. Starting at 8 or 9 years old I read about these workouts Arnold would do where he puked or fainted and of course I bought into it but it was all BS. Depending on who you ask Arnold started steroids at 13 or 15; mid teens is where most of the legends started. I trained like a madman without roids until late teens. A number of years later I changed my opinion on 'natural foundations,' ideally you would do drug assistance from the start, save your body and joints and train intelligently, you can still train as hard as you want but some things are risky, like heavy benches. But who am I kidding, even if I knew all this back then I'd probably still have trained too heavy
Once I 'knew' how to lift, or had a pretty good idea, ideally I'd have started GH and some test and ramped up and then reached a circa-max in 2-3 years, I mean like 90% of my potential size. Can still be done pretty damn safely from late teens imo, I'd be in better health starting younger while knowing some things I now know. Problem is you don't 'know' when starting out unless you luck into knowing a good mentor. Even then you don't really know what you want for your future at that age, so it's problematic. You only know after if it was 'worth it.'
