Have you been training for strength and not getting the results that you should be seeing? Are you starting to doubt if you will ever achieve anything worthwhile and not wanting to bother doing exercise anymore? Are you starting to wonder why other people can achieve incredible things and you are not making the progress you deserve?
Yes? I know how you feel. I've been there.
Very rarely does the issue have a lot to do with genetics, or diet. More often than not it has everything to do with one (or more) of the three topics listed in the checklist below:
- Did you train hard enough?
- Did you train consistently enough?
- Did you train long enough?
Run through that quick checklist whenever your outcome did not match your expectations. Fix that, and you will start to see the outcomes that you deserve!
That was simple.
You didn't need to spend thousands of dollars on gym memberships, personal trainers, dietary supplements, bizarre exercise machines, men's health books/magazines, branded gym clothing, and following dodgy fitness fads.
Train hard, train often, and train for a long time.
You're welcome.
Did you train hard enough?
Going for a leisurely stroll will not help you achieve the results you want. It doesn't matter how many hours you do this, it doesn't matter that you go with a friend, and it doesn't matter that you squeeze into tight yoga pants that really show off your...best attribute. Unless you train hard and push yourself you will achieve very little and you will achieve it slowly.
Going for a leisurely stroll will not help you achieve the results you want. It doesn't matter how many hours you do this, it doesn't matter that you go with a friend, and it doesn't matter that you squeeze into tight yoga pants that really show off your...best attribute. Unless you train hard and push yourself you will achieve very little and you will achieve it slowly.
Walking slowly on a treadmill while talking to your friend on the exercise bike next to you is better than doing nothing, it is better than sitting watching TV. It is inefficient, and you will not get the results you are after.
You would get better results and faster results by putting in less hours and just trained harder. To be clear, I am not advocating training to failure - that yields poor results for strength. What I am saying is you should be pushing to 50% to 75% of your maximum.
Did you train consistently enough?
Training two or three times per week is not enough to make real difference very fast. Paying huge amounts of money to do a 'boot camp' once or twice a year won't do much for you. This is better than doing nothing, it is better than never training, it also allows you to smugly talk to people about how hard you are trying, but you won't get good results from it.
Training two or three times per week is not enough to make real difference very fast. Paying huge amounts of money to do a 'boot camp' once or twice a year won't do much for you. This is better than doing nothing, it is better than never training, it also allows you to smugly talk to people about how hard you are trying, but you won't get good results from it.
Most western training is aimed at aesthetics rather than increasing strength. Most western training regimes advocate mixing up your training from one day to the next, having rest days each week, and never training the same muscle group two days in a row. While this might help with hypertrophy, it is very inefficient at building strength. It won't make you as strong as you otherwise could be. You would get better results a lot faster by putting in less hours, never training to failure, and aiming to train every day. Yes, you should train the same muscle group every single day if possible.
Things come up, few people can train every day without ruining their life, but you should aim to train every day. That way you may get in 5 or 6 training sessions in an average week.
Did you train long enough?
If you are a novice you will probably see some results (that other people can't yet see) from training within the first week. This is awesome and it gets people motivated. Then the results plateau. This plateau demotivates people and they stop exercising. This cycle is pretty common.
If you train for less than thirty days you may be stronger than before, but you won't yet be strong. Thirty days is enough to see some decent improvement. If you are not seeing the results that you deserve, then you likely need to train for a lot longer than thirty days.
Building short term strength can be reasonably quick , all you have to do is produce the right kind of damage so your body develops more muscle fibers. Building true strength takes a lot more time, you need to train your central nervous system, and you need to produce more mitochondria in each muscle fiber, this doesn't happen with the fake pump that most western training advocates.
How long will you need to train - six months, two years, several decades, who knows. If you want to get strong you need to train for a long time.
