Viktor Stahl. Episode 2: Ectomorph Training.
Where the system begins with oneself.
Every music begins with an impulse. But an impulse in itself means nothing until it acquires a form. We searched for it for a long time. Metallherz never strove to simply play heavy. We were interested in something else: why the sound holds. Why some compositions live, while others remain a mere collection of frequencies.
Form is not a shell. It is a system for retaining meaning. In architecture, it determines whether a building will withstand the pressure of time. In music — whether the sound can outlive the era that gave birth to it.
Over time, I began to understand that form is never only external. It cannot be built in a score if it does not exist inside the one who creates it. Music requires a frame — not only an acoustic one but a human one. It requires a stability that cannot be faked with technique or equipment. Metallherz sought form in the geometry of rhythm, in the tension between silence and noise, in vibrations, and in the space of sound.
And I sought it — in the body.
As we delved deeper into the creation of music, one thing became clearer: sound obeys the same laws as matter. It has a limit of strength. There is fatigue. There is a destruction point. And if you want to understand these boundaries — one day you will have to test them on yourself.
I must say that in this Part of our story, new characters will appear, members of the band — Hans and Konrad. I am used to describing others. I disassemble Hans’s chaos, structure Konrad’s electrical storms, feel how Klara transforms tension into a voice, and see how Jürgen holds it all on load-bearing beams.
But who will describe the architect locked in a building that refuses to stand still? Over time, I realized: if the building does not obey calculations, the architect must become part of the system himself. Touch the bearing beams. Feel the weight. Test the limits of strength.
That is exactly how I started lifting iron. Metal ceases to be an abstraction — it becomes a language in which reality speaks to you.
Metabolism.
My body never strove for mass. It strove to deflate. There is a cosmic humor in this. I aimed for monumentality in music and metal — but was locked in a body designed not for accumulation, but for loss. My metabolism works like a blast furnace in which they forgot to put the ore — it burns everything. Food, emotions, rest — everything disappears into this black hole with the indifference inherent only to the great elements.
The rest of the time, I was an ordinary “office organism.” A creature feeding on deadlines, blueprints, and black coffee. After ten hours as a “biological attachment to a desk, ” I felt reality thinning out. I needed grounding.
And I went to the Gym.
For Hans, iron is ordinary life, work, reality. He is an endomorph, a favorite of gravity. He only needs to look at a barbell to grow.
I study ectomorph training. He studied ways to lose weight.
And it was precisely this ridiculous asymmetry — between gift and doubt, mass and discipline — that became not a private drama, but the beginning of Metallherz in its new configuration.
Body-Building.
For me, every workout is an act of engineering violence against nature. In the early years, I made the mistake of a novice hungry for iron, stepping onto the path of mass-building with incredible zeal and energy. I worked too much, too often, believing that if I tortured the structure, it would become stronger.
I was wrong. An organism is not a blueprint. It does not obey logic. It obeys Time.
The plateau came quietly, like fog from the marshes. Without warning. At some point, the mirror simply became polite and indifferent, and the weight on the bar froze like a curse. It was the Void.
Earlier, I tried to scream into this abyss — adding sets, weights, fury. But the abyss only laughed back with the crunch of joints. Now I have grown wiser. I understood the terrifying truth of the ectomorph: we do not grow in the gym. We grow when we rest.
This requires humility. To come to the temple of pain, lift a weight that seems unliftable, and leave… leaving the body in a state of light shock. Everyone strives to pump the bicep; everyone wants it to be visible, yet almost no one wants to understand why it is needed at all. They hammer it in isolation, with fanaticism, as if the size of the arm could prove something on its own.
I went through that too.
Over time, it became clear: for an ectomorph, modern training is the art of understatement. Work close to failure, but without hysteria. Without the desire to “finish it off” at any cost, as if the body were an enemy to be broken. Minimum exercises. Maximum meaning. The bicep doesn’t grow because you shout at it. It grows when you give it work, not a spectacle.
Rows, pull-ups, holding weight — basic movements in which the body is forced to engage as a whole. When the arm is not a soloist, but part of the construction. When the load is distributed honestly, without cheating or shortcuts.
At some point, I stopped breaking myself down into muscles. I started building a system. And the bicep took its place in it — not as an ornament, but as a load-bearing element. As a part without which the whole system begins to creak.
Nutrition ceased to be a ritual. It became the refueling of a bioreactor. Protein and gainers are not food. They are the elixir of life, allowing one to cheat biology without violence. I don’t fight myself. I sign a contract with my organism for an upgrade.
Now, standing before the mirror, I see a construction. Long levers, narrow shoulders — the frame of a Gothic cathedral, which I am slowly, brick by brick, filling with the concrete of muscles. I build the body the same way as a guitar. With a safety margin. With an understanding of material fatigue. With a calculation for a long, grueling distance.
Perfection is unattainable, like the horizon. But the attempt to create a monument out of air and one’s own bones is, perhaps, the most honest occupation for a person with Ectomorph genetics.
(from the notes of Viktor Stahl)
In addition, the Technical Regulations for Bodybuilding are for beginner athletes.