Fundamentals: Lessons Learned from Lifting

 For this latest installment of my semi-regular "Fundamentals" series (inspired by the great IronMan writer of my youth, Bradley Steiner), I thought it would be a fitting time to discuss a few of the fundamental lessons that I've learned from lifting, lessons I sure-as-hell wish I'd known when I was first starting out.  So here goes...

Matthew Sloan builds his muscle mass through "consistent" training!

Lesson #1: Consistency Trumps Everything

     The first lesson here is the one that most people intuitively "know" to be correct.  If you want to gain plenty of muscle mass, get stronger, lose bodyfat, or whatever-your-goals, it's not going to happen without consistency.

     In other words, showing up isn't just "half" the battle; it's the foundation that underlies everything else.

     Now, since this is the one lesson here that is naturally intuitive, how come folks don't have more success at, well, anything involved with getting stronger, more muscular, or being in better shape?  Simple, because we either don't know how to be consistent or we don't feel as if we can be consistent.

     Let's begin with the "how" of consistency.  Because once you understand how to be consistent, the can of consistency will fall into place.

     First, decide if you're the kind of lifter who has a problem with consistency.  (If you don't have a problem, then you can just skip to the next step, but I have a feeling that's NOT most people.)  For instance, when I was younger, in order to be consistent, truly consistent, I competed in different kinds of sporting events, primarily martial arts tournaments, followed by powerlifting meets as I focused more on lifting.  Having a goal I believe (such as a powerlifting meet, a bodybuilding competition, a strongman event, etc.) is one of the best ways for younger lifters/trainees to stay motivated.  Especially if you're the competitive "sort" and if you're already busy doing plenty of other things - even if those things are nothing more than spending time with your young kids, cooking and prepping dinner throughout the week, doing chores, and/or keeping a 40+ hours-per-week full-time job - in other words, the sort of life many young people in their 20's and (especially) 30's have who also really enjoy some sort of "working out."

     As you age, you may find that you have a little less drive than before (i.e. when you were younger), and, therefore, need another strategy to help you stay consistent.  (And this, of course, also goes for you if you always had the desire to workout, but just found your motivation drifting during a workout, or during several back-to-back workouts.)

     I personally find the best way to develop consistency is through the use of daily workouts.  The workouts don't have to be hard - in fact, they shouldn't be - in fact, the workouts should be downright "easy" compared to what you were probably doing before developing a good consistency habit.  You can train your whole body in one session, or you can split up your body into two sessions - never more than two.  Either way, only do about three exercises for a total of 30 reps.  (For more on this sort of training, see my post entitled "The 30-Rep Program".)

Lesson: #2: The Majority are Always Wrong

     While the 1st and 4th lesson listed here are intuitive, lessons 2 and 3 are probably anything but!  Which is a good thing to (possibly) break you out of whatever "herd mentality" you may have gotten yourself sucked into, especially if that herd mentality has anything to do with the almost cult-like obsession of some parts of our "fitness industry"!

     This is NOT to say that the majority don't sometimes understand a subject, but if you talk to more than half the USA's population about any subject, and expect anyone to explain it with any degree of erudition, you're going to be sorely disappointed if you expect to find any experts.  So... take "fitness" as an example and go ask a random 100 people on the street about how to properly regulate macronutrients to build muscle and burn bodyfat.  Ask 100 random people 100 random times, and very few people are going to have the answer for you.

     Which, sorry to say, means that if you go to any gym anywhere in America, and expect the average people there to understand why they are doing what they are doing, you aren't going to get many good answers.

     So as far as a "life lesson" goes here, you must ask yourself if you're doing what 99% of the rest of the gym is doing.  And if you can answer why you're doing it that way, then, please, go ahead with your lifting life - you know why you are doing it that way, and that's good enough whether I (or ANYONE) say otherwise.  But if you don't know why you're lifting the way you are, and can't explain why that form of lifting is good for the exact results you're trying to get from your training, then those are questions you need to ask yourself.  Then go and do the research necessary to make sure you are on the right track.  And then constantly refine that research in the forged fire of training until you know what form of training, and why, it works for you!

Lesson #3: How You Feel is a Lie

     Including this "lesson of lifting life" here means that I'm gonna probably have to add a disclaimer at the top because some moron (not you, of course) reads this and then goes and trains his chest absurdly hard for two days in a row despite the fact that his chest was sore to the touch after the first workout because, you know, C.S. said, "how you feel is a lie", and then he ends up with a torn pectoral muscle, and then doesn't know how this happened because he was only following my sage advice.

     What I mean by "how you feel is a lie" is that you can't necessarily go by how you feel to determine such things as whether you "had a good workout" or, more importantly, I believe, whether or not you should train again.  Soreness isn't necessarily an indicator that you shouldn't train again.  Nor is the fact that you "feel great" before a workout mean that you will actually have a good workout!

     If you haven't figured this out yet, there will be many times when you go to the gym and expect to have an absolutely sorry-as-hell workout when, lo and friggin' behold, you end up having the best workout you've had in weeks.  And, of course, the inverse is also true.  There will be plenty of days when you feel great, the sort of great that usually and typically is a portent of the good workout to come, and then go to the gym only to have a "bad" workout session, when none of the sets felt "right" and/or everything just seemed to hurt more than it should, or you found yourself getting really fatigued really quickly.

     And all of that is because how you feel is a lie!

     And the lesson that can be learned here is to make sure that you don't miss a gym session... or a run... or a regular class at the local dojo/dojang just because you feel bad.  In other words, just because you are still a little sore or just because you feel as if you will have a bad workout doesn't mean that you WILL ACTUALLY have a bad workout.  In fact, I've had some of the best workouts of my life - even days where I broke "personal bests" - on days that I thought would be bad workout sessions.

     But the flip side of this is true as well.  You may think or feel as if you will have an awesome session only to find that you feel "flat" or just fatigued or lacking in either strength or power.

Lesson #4: When All Else Fails, Get Back to the Basics

     This is the lesson listed here that should be the most obvious, but for some reason most of us get trapped into the opposite approach, the opposite outlook to the quandary of what to do when our progress stalls to a grinding halt.  What most of us choose to do - even someone like myself who should know better - is to make things more complicated by adding instead of subtracting and simplifying!

     When all else fails - and it abso-friggin-lutely will - get back to the basics.

     When your mass-building regimen isn't working very well, get back to the basics of limited exercises and limited sets and limited training days-per-week.

     When your diet is stagnating and you just can't seem to lose bodyfat, get back to the basics of cutting out all of your sugar, fasting between meals, and earning your meals through hard, basic workouts.

     Because when all else fails, the basics do not!