“It sometimes made it impossible for me to play”: George Lynch on how weightlifting affected his guitar playing
George Lynch has recalled how bodybuilding throughout the ’90s impacted his guitar skills, admitting that it “definitely” had an effect.
“In some small ways, I think it obviously made me stronger,” the former Dokken guitarist says in a new interview with Ultimate Guitar. “So I think that was beneficial to a certain extent.”
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Lynch goes on: “But also, I was starting to get these really massive cramps in my forearms. Static cramps that wouldn’t go away. And I would get them when I’d try to play anything extended. And I had to try to do different things to try to alleviate that.”
Lynch was an avid bodybuilder throughout the 1990s, notably during a time when musicians had to play the part but also look good doing it.
“It was a byproduct of that. All that lifting, it really made it impossible for me sometimes to play,” he says. “Any kind of extended solo, my left arm would just cramp up. And my hand would be like a claw. It was frozen. It was really actually kind of scary. And, yeah, not good. I was definitely overdoing it.”
In 2010, Lynch called his bodybuilding habit “one of the silliest things I’ve ever done. I felt so anti-musical” during an interview with Revolver magazine [via Blabbermouth].
“Even the guys from VH1 were making fun of me. It also makes it difficult to play. But I just work out now to stay in shape.”
In April last year, during an interview with Full Bloom, Lynch also admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs to boost his weightlifting: “The things that were required, that I got into in bodybuilding, were worse for my health than anything I’d ever done in rock ‘n’ roll.”
Responding to whether he had used steroids, the guitarist replied: “Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Nobody gets looking like that by just being naturally aspirated… It’s very, very common. You really can’t compete without doing it. It’s really disingenuous kind of call it ‘sport’.
“It’s really a drug contest. And that’s why it kind of miffs me every time I see any kind of documentary or any article of something about bodybuilders. The first thing I look for, ‘Are they talking about the elephant in the room?’ No. Very rarely.
“You can’t get these freak bodies or even these admirable-looking physiques without doing some kind of cheating. And you pay the price for all cheating… There’s just no free ride. You’re gonna get some great advantages, you’re gonna feel great, you’re gonna look great, it’s gonna be awesome and then you’re gonna pay for it. It’s a Faustian bargain with the devil.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
